


Between Worlds

by AnOddSock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Bad Dreams, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Happy Ending, Hell Trauma, Kidnapping, Loss of Identity, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV Sam Winchester, Past Torture, Realm Hopping, Self-Discovery, The curious case of the missing memories and where to find them, tfwbigbang2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-13 09:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20580257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Every step Sam takes further away from home begins to leech his memories, until he isn't even sure where home is anymore, or how he came to be with the two men he only knows by name alone. Caught up and dragged away from his life as a promising lawyer startling new snatches of information begin to invade his thoughts, and he sees things he never would have believed were possible, in places that make him question his sanity.Will he ever know which things are true, and which things are lies? Will he and his fellow captive find a way to understand their situation? And will their captor prove to be friend or foe?





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fic for the Team Free Will Big Bang 2019! It got a lot longer than planned but I'm happy with how it turned out, writing gen fic for once was really really enjoyable.
> 
> It's set during Season 12 of SPN, and it could slot into canon somewhere around the halfway point of the season, somewhere before they properly started working with the BMOL, but after Kelly is pregnant. This is... vaguely important information to have as you proceed.
> 
> My artist for this bang was the lovely [hit_the_books](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books/pseuds/hit_the_books)  
Their art is embedded here in the fic but please also check out the [art masterpost](https://hitthebooksposts.tumblr.com/post/187625602179/art-between-worlds-team-free-will-bb) and leave some love in the form of likes or comments/reblogs!
> 
> Please feel free to comment along as you read if you enjoy doing that I'll enjoy seeing your thoughts, and you can check the TFWBB collection for more of this years works.

The dreams always feel the same, no matter how the content changes. Whether it's running through darkness, gun raised (he doesn’t own a gun, doesn’t think he ever has, but his dream self knows how to hold it), towards cries for help; or something clawing at him, large and looming, increasing dread around every corner, a sense of purpose as he moves towards whatever is out there no matter what it is. Danger or puzzles or heartache or murky waters, there's never a pattern.

But the feelings… that he’s missing something (someone?); that he’s forgotten something important; that he doesn’t belong here; that he’s lost; that the world isn’t as it should be, those feelings always permeate the dreams whether he’s running or fighting or, god forbid, dying.

And every time upon waking he wonders if he’s always dreamt like this. Rubbing his eyes he thinks it must be impossible to have the same dreams throughout your whole life, but he can’t recall a time they didn’t plague him. He gets out of bed and tries to leave the unease behind, between the sheets, in the dark. He almost, _almost,_ manages it.

* * *

Today though, the disquieting paranoia that something is wrong has followed him from the bedroom. All day it’s sat like a weight on his shoulders and he has to work at not looking behind him every few steps. He jogs, a gentle loping stretch of his legs after a long day working a case. He’s due in court in three weeks and there are people relying on him to do his job, and do it well. He convinces himself that the stress of the court proceedings looming is what has set him on edge.

A TV dinner, and a smattering of files laid out beside him on the couch, and he rests his eyes for a minute, finally overcome with tiredness. He slips sideways into sleep and the wrongness prevails, permeating his half snatches of dreams.

It’s not just a dream though, he wakes with a start at the soft closing of a door. Living alone… that’s not a sound he should hear. He sits still for half a heartbeat while he weighs the possibilities, hoping for a reasonable explanation. He turns his head and half rises, before he’s dragged back into the couch from behind and a rag is clamped over his mouth and nose.

Thrashing, fighting the arm that circles his chest to hold him steady, he yells. It’s muffled. He gets dizzy, pries the hand holding the rag away for a second and gets one drag of clean air before he tries to ask, to _demand_ information, but the sickly chloroform is forced back under his nose before he can speak and he slumps, stomach roiling and eyes losing focus.

“Sorry Sam, but you’ll be fine. Breathe deeply, I’m not going to hurt you,” says a gravelly voice in his ear.

His thoughts run wild in the seconds before unconsciousness.

_Why do I have my sofa with its back to the door, why can’t I see the entry and exit points, that’s not safe or clever. Should’ve been prepared, seen this coming, should’ve been able to fight._

And then everything goes black.

* * *

He wakes up to an aching shoulder — laid on hard, unyielding ground, unforgiving and uncomfortable — and a tirade of shouting.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You sick bastard, where am I?”

He groans, head pounding and pries open his eyes.

“Someone else there? Hey, who’s there? Is there more than one of you?”

There’s a guy sat on the floor next to him, highly alert, but blindfolded. He’s in casual clothes and has a spike of brown-blond hair and he turns his head side to side as if trying to pick up sounds. The fabric across his eyes is a muddy green and the rope holding it in place around his head has little designs and runes carefully placed on it, black shapes against the brown rope.

Sam groans again, and shifts, and realises with a jolt that his mouth is stuffed full of wet fabric and there’s a rope tied off behind his own head too. He can’t speak, and he can’t move properly and groggily he remembers it’s because he was chloroformed. He takes a second to coordinate his hand with his brain and finally gets his arm to obey his wishes, lifting a hand to tug at the rope holding the wad of material inside his mouth. No matter how he moves, or how much he pulls at the knot, nothing will budge. He growls again, low and frustrated, and slumps against the floor. His limbs may be free but he isn’t going anywhere until they start working properly again.

“Tell me what’s going on. Who’s there? C-Cas? Castiel! What’s happening?”

Sam turns and eyes the room, it’s big — so big he can’t see the edges — and cold, and empty. There’s a couple of battery powered torches sat beside them that light up the gloom but the darkness recedes away from them in all directions. He shuffles sideways and flails a hand until he hits the other man on the knee. He jumps in surprise and Sam makes as much vocalisation as he can manage.

“Hey. What… are you there?”

Sam makes a “no” sound as best he can.

“Did he get you too?”

Sam hums an agreement.

“Okay. Shit okay. You’re gagged? Make a noise for yes, keep… keep quiet for no.”

Sam grunts.

“Are you hurt?”

Sam isn’t sure.

“No? You’re okay then?”

Sam isn’t sure about that either.

“Okay you don't know. Can you… could you help me with the blindfold?”

Sam tries to shift, to push upright, and doesn’t manage it. He falls back onto his elbow with a thud, head swaying.

Footsteps approach and he tenses before a guy in a tan coat with messy dark hair strides into their little pool of light.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet. Please try not to hurt yourselves,” he says.

“Maybe you should try not to hurt us too, just a thought.” the other guys snipes.

Their captor sighs, crouching down to meet Sam on his level and check his eyes, holding Sam’s head still and peering at him. Sam flinches and tries to roll away, moaning, spitting curses that sound like panicked sounds.

“Don’t touch him!”

“I’m trying to help,” says the man Sam assumes is called Castiel.

“Yeah I’m sure, kidnapping really seems like something a _helpful_ guy would do.”

Castiel frowns and pulls Sam up until he can sit on his ass. Sam tries to bat his hands away and to get up and run but his head swims and all he can focus on is breathing. Slowly the dizziness subsides and he levels the man with a glare.

“You’ll understand eventually. I can’t… I can’t explain now.”

“You keep saying that,” the other man says angrily.

“And you keep not believing me.”

They seem to have no trouble arguing with each other, like the blindfolded man isn’t as fearful as he should be, like there’s some familiarity between them. How long have these two been together? Sam wonders with a jolt of fear. How long has this man been held hostage? The odds look better now that Sam’s here too, two to one, but they are at a disadvantage. Blinded, hindered from communicating.

“Sam, this is Dean, he’s a giant pain in my ass. I do hope you’ll be more cooperative.”

Sam feels whatever colour was left in his face drain away and he shakes his head. Whatever this stranger has planned, he doesn’t want to go willingly, to make it easy. There’s a spark of something steel and strong inside him that refuses to back down. Probably something that grew from his law practice, the ability to put emotion aside and stare problems directly in the face without being overwhelmed.

He doesn’t feel as afraid as he expects, like he’s rising to the challenge. He stares Castiel down with a glare he’s perfected over the years.

Castiel sighs.

“Well, there’s that hope dashed. I suppose we’d better get on with it.”

* * *

Getting on with it seems to involve lashing both Sam and Dean into a rope harness that Castiel can grip in one hand, and pulling them to their feet. Sam fights it as best he can, trying to pry himself free from the hands and rope, to push Castiel away but the man is strong. Stronger than any person Sam has ever tussled with. How much would someone have to be able to bench press to not even budge when Sam shoves with all his strength, or to manage to grab his fists when he throws punches with all his weight?

“You tryin’ to fight him? S’not gonna work, he’s like the world’s strongest man,” Dean says with a sigh after several minutes of hearing Sam’s grunts and resistance.

Sam gives in, breathing hard through his nose and looks between both men furious and unable to do anything about it. Before long they’re both roped up, with the pale fibres wound around their chests and waists, and as Dean stands Sam notices there’s a backpack that looks stuffed full and heavy on his back.

Castiel slips a bag with one strap over Sam’s head and Sam stares at him in surprise. “I’ll need you to carry this, please.” He rearranges the bag so it doesn’t cut into Sam’s shoulder and the weight lays solidly at his hip. A peek inside shows Sam bottles of water, dried foods, and a spare pair of shoes.

He doesn’t want to know why Castiel thinks he might need those. He doesn’t want anything that the man has to offer.

“Time to go.”

Going, however, seems to entail walking in a circle around the large abandoned building floor. Not that Sam can see more than a pale circle of light, but he watches the way Castiel's footsteps turn in a gentle arc, leading them around. He huffs in annoyance, wondering what this maniac has planned or what it’s all about, and Castiel looks over his shoulder at him with an inscrutable expression on his face.

He tries to pull the ropes free from Castiel’s grip, attempts to prevent himself from being led around like an animal on a leash, but it’s a lost cause. Castiel holds fast, and pulls hard, and when it seems like he might happily pull Sam along the ground to get him to keep moving, he decides to just walk.

Periodically he yanks at his own discomfort, trying to displace the gag and never managing. He watches Dean rub at his blindfolded eyes and try to push it away from his face, and the material resolutely stays put. It’s infuriating and makes no sense. Castiel keeps them walking at too brisk a pace for them to try anything else.

Dean stumbles and curses, even the unbroken ground hard to navigate blinded. “Can’t fucking see a thing, please just take this off.”

Castiel says nothing and Sam rages, silently fuming.

He steps sideways, grabbing hold of Dean’s wrist with his hands, and giving him a moment to choose what to do. Dean stiffens and then tentatively curls his fingers between Sam’s, squeezing once. Sam squeezes back, and places his other hand at Dean’s back as a guide, and falls into step again when Castiel continues to move.

Dean walks more easily after that, seemingly reassured of his movements with Sam beside him. Sam has a small swell of pride at being able to help and thinks _fuck you_ at Castiel’s back. He notices their new arrangement, peering at them both with narrowed eyes and nods, almost as if he’s satisfied with something he sees.

“Good, now we can go. This will feel… strange.”

Sam has half a second to wonder what he means before Castiel intones a flurry of incomprehensible words, and pulls a vial from his pocket that he uncorks one handed, before throwing its contents into the air. It spreads out in a perfect arc, ash like and scattering and lands… on nothing, suspended in midair.

An archway of utter darkness, completely devoid of all light, appears; a doorway cut into the air before his eyes. He yells, caught in surprise, mind spinning, and stumbles backwards, pushing Dean away with him.

“What! What?” Dean urges.

Sam shakes his head, grumbling, desperately trying to speak. Is it occult? Witchcraft? Magic? Or a holograph? An illusion? Or is he just drugged and hallucinating, and none of this is real?

Castiel regards him sadly, and tugs on the ropes wound around his chest. “I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

Sam stumbles forward, dragging Dean with him.

“What’s happening, someone talk to me,” Dean begs.

“We’re going home. I won’t lead you astray, I need you to know that now.” it’s said with finality, a statement that brooks no response. And then Castiel is leading them into the dark.

There’s heat, and sparking fizzes that crackle in the space around his body. Pressure on his chest, and a pounding on his head. His eardrums pop, everything goes silent for the longest few seconds of his life while his eyesight seems to completely fail him as if he’s stepped into a swathe of black velvet. It feels like pushing against resistance, leaning into the wind. And then it’s over and they’re through to the other side.

But the other side of what?


	2. The Netherworld

Walking.

So much walking.

Sam’s feet hurt. His knees protest. His back aches.

His ears are ringing from the constant stream of insults and swearing that Dean keeps spewing. They go slowly, Dean’s lack of sight apparently taken into consideration, but Castiel is seemingly unmoved by everything else. Uncaring of their plight, deaf to Dean’s insistence that he should let them go.

It’s dark continuously, practically impenetrable to his eyes, a swathe of black surrounding them on all sides. Whatever warehouse or barn they’d been in before couldn’t possibly have been this big but the tread under his feet hasn’t changed. It doesn’t feel like concrete anymore but it doesn’t feel like grass or dirt either. It’s smooth, but the pool of light emanating from Castiel’s torches — one in his hand, the other strapped to his belt — don’t show anything. A black-as-charcoal floor and emptiness all around them.

He wonders if their footsteps are echoing but he can’t tell. Dean has finally shut up, shuffling along beside him and keeping whatever thoughts he has to himself. He’s tired and his jaw resonates with pain. He needs a drink. He doesn't know what time it is, but it feels like maybe food should be on the agenda soon.

He makes a small vocalisation, pleading, to catch Castiel’s attention. The man turns and regards him thoughtfully, looking harried.

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m trying to find somewhere safe to stop for a while.”

“Where are we?” Dean asks, voicing the question Sam hasn’t been able to.

“In between,” is the only answer Castiel gives them.

When they do stop, later, Sam sinks to the floor on shaky legs and lets his head drop. Dean stands awkwardly behind him, not knowing what’s going on, until Castiel guides him to sit beside Sam.

“Fuck you,” he says as Cas touches him.

“I know, drink,” Castiel replies.

He lets Dean guzzle a quarter of a bottle of water and screws the cap on for later, and then moves to help Sam. He flinches away first, staring Castiel down, but the water looks like exactly what he needs so he lets Castiel touch him and his gag be removed. There’s a disconnect somewhere in his mind that this is really happening, that he’s been gagged for hours and is now somewhere far away from home. It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be.

But his aching jaw says otherwise and the water that he grabs for and gratefully glugs wakes him from something like a reverie. He’s angry, sure, but he’s alert and on edge — nerves, or terror, or confusion.

“What do you want?” he rasps, beseeching.

Castiel has the decency to look ashamed. “To… to bring you home. To make you remember who you are.”

“I was home, you drugged me and kidnapped me, you’re crazy.”

“I know it seems like that—”

“You drugged him? That’s even more messed up than what you did to me!” Dean says angrily.

“Let us go, you don’t have to keep doing this,” Sam says.

“I can’t do that. You’d never forgive me,” Castiel replies. He picks up the gag again and Sam recoils.

“Please, please don’t. My jaw.”

Castiel looks hesitantly between the two of them. “Alright.”

Dean’s blindfold goes the way of his gag, taken off and slipped away. They look at each other for the first time and something in his stomach flips because Dean looks familiar.

“You okay?” Dean asks him.

“Been better.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Castiel pulls food from his own bag, dry crackers and an orange they split into segments. Then he leaves, walking completely out of sight, but not before tethering their ropes to the ground with a tent peg he pulls from his own pack. Dean tries to yank it free, kicking it in anger when he can’t manage it.

“You’re probably weak, with all this…”

“Maybe, adrenalin should fuel some strength though right? Like mothers who lift cars off their babies? We should be able to over power him.”

“There’s something weird about him. He’s stronger than he looks.”

“You can say that again.”

“How long have you… when did he grab you?”

“I’m not sure,” Dean rubs his face and scratches at stubble dotting his jaw. “Two days? We drove across the country.”

“What? What for?”

“To find you apparently.”

Sam panics then, his heart thumping in his chest, wondering if this wasn’t random. “He said that? He was looking for me specifically?”

“No, but he didn’t do anything else, so it seems like he has a plan and you’re part of it.”

“I don’t even know him, I’ve never seen him before today!”

“Well neither had I. He said his truck was broken down — I help my uncle with his mechanics business on my days off — I went to pick him up… ended up bundled into his cab and you know the rest.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a long time, lost in their own thoughts, until Dean complains about the ropes.

“I don’t get it, they should be able to loosen but I can’t do a damn thing. These markings look like they’ve been burned on too, I wonder what that’s all about? Turn around, let me get a look at yours.”

Sam obliges and Dean spends long minutes tugging and huffing and digging fingernails into the knots behind Sam’s back, but to no avail. They aren’t constricting, more an annoyance, but their presence is a constant reminder that they’re both stuck somewhere they don’t want to be.

Cas returns, looking anxious and hurriedly gets them up. They try to resist, but he shoves and pulls and marches them away, looking over his shoulder more and more. It makes Sam tense all over, concern clouding his own mind as he wonders if they’re being followed, and whether that would be a good thing for himself and Dean, or bad.

The walking is monotonous, but there are odd sounds now, in the distance, but moving nearer and farther in jumps and echoes. From the corners of his eyes Sam thinks he sees things take shape, growing and shifting and then disappearing again.

“Where are we?” he asks in a whisper, not sure why he feels the need to be quiet. His curiosity and fear have both dulled, but a frantic energy has grown in its place, an unease settling at the back of his mind. Something doesn’t feel right and all his senses are attuned to it, he just doesn’t know what it is.

“The netherworld,” Castiel replies.

“Meaning?” Sam prompts, trying to hold on to some kind of logical explanation, no matter what his eyes and ears are telling him he’s seeing.

“Exactly what it sounds like, neither here nor there, an in-between.”

“Cracks of the sofa cushion of the universe huh?” Dean says, flashing a sardonic smile when they both turn to look at him.

“That’s… that’s actually not a terrible analogy,” Castiel says, nodding, and tugging them forwards.

“Whoa, dude, I was joking. A real explanation would be good right about now.”

“That is the real explanation.”

“It can’t be,” Sam says vehemently. “So how about owning up to what you’ve really done to us to make us see this, or where you’ve really taken us to mess with our heads. What do you gain from lying?”

“I am not lying,” Castiel says, with what sounds like forced calm. “And I’ll bet your instincts tell you so.”

“You don’t know jack squat about my instincts,” Dean sneers. “Because if you did you’d know they’ve been flipping you the bird since day one.”

“Yes I’m sure you’re capable of being very crass, and of doubting everything I say. But I imagine what you’re also realising right now is that you know your chances are better with me than without me.”

“Only because without you, we’re stuck somewhere we don’t know, trussed together in ropes we can’t get out of.”

“Which, speaking of, how does that even work? Is it some sort of glue?” Sam says, interrupting the conversation.

“Magic,” Cas replies, deadbeat and series, not missing a beat.

Sam shares a look with his fellow captive, both clamming up at the realisation that the person they’re with is most probably crazy, as well as dangerous. They fall into step, keeping pace behind him so the ropes don’t tug. Sam isn’t sure how he knows it, but shoulder to shoulder with Dean feels like the best way forward, and at least the two of them see eye to eye, no matter how far off the beaten path Castiel has very clearly gone.

* * *

A few hours later Castiel lets them stop again. They pull water from their packs and rest their legs for a few moments. It’s pleasant to take a weight off until the ground begins to shake beneath them and a roar rises up out of the dark. Sam gets instantly to his feet, turning his back on the men beside him. He keeps Dean at his shoulder, scanning the black depths as far as his eye can see.

A glance behind him shows Dean standing ready, legs spread, fists clenched. Castiel has moved a step and a half away and between the three of them they have formed an almost perfect triangle, their backs protected by the other two.

He has half a second to process their formation, and the readiness of it, before there’s a crack like thunder so loud is ears ring, agony lancing through his head for a second. Castiel seems unaffected but Sam claps his hands over his ears and sees Dean do the same. The ground moves to his left, a shape surging up, a ripple in the black, a car sized shadow that seems solid and moving as fast as a wolf. Sam lunges forward, grabs for Dean’s waist, and hauls them both to the side. Sprawled across the floor, and Castiel is pulled down with them.

A high pitched inhuman squeal follows the monolithic mass that barrels past them, and the silence afterward is heavier and more still, as he catches his breath. He’d moved without thought, without stopping to weigh the options just a pure driving force to evade the danger, and he never knew he had such fast reflexes.

Dean scrambles to his feet, staring in the direction the thing disappeared, having left no trace behind.

“What the fuck?” Dean mutters, stepping forward, alert. Strong. Sure.

Castiel is smiling as he picks himself up, moving to untangle the ropes where they have twisted around each other.

“What are you so happy about?” Sam asks, feeling defensive. If this is all some trick to mess with their minds he just played into their captors hands by showing it’s working, that he believes whatever bizarre illusion is being forced on them.

“You have swift reactions, I’m just glad to see it,” Castiel shrugs, offering his hand to haul Sam up.

Sam declines, standing on his own, joining Dean where he has paced as far as their tether allows. “What kind of mind trick is this?” he shoots over his shoulder.

“No trick, that was something trying to break through from another realm.”

Dean about turns, arms crossed and angry. “You expect us to buy that?”

“I think you should believe your eyes, and trust your intestines.”

Sam frowns, fighting a smile, “Our... gut?”

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “Your intuition. You’re both quite adept at it.”

“What is your gut telling you?” Dean asks Sam sharply.

“Not to let my guard down, or take the word of a madman.”

“Good, right, well as long as we’re in agreement.”

“You can ignore the truth for now,” Castiel says heavily, “it all catches up with us eventually. There’s enough power near here for a door. We should use it now before it’s too late. I wanted to go further, but I don’t want to risk staying if the possibility of an incursion is becoming more likely. I think our presence here may be setting off chain reactions that I’d rather avoid.”

“What the hell are you on about?” Dean asks. Cas doesn't deign to reply.

“I’m not going any further until you tell us what’s going on,” Sam insists.

“Well we can’t stay here,” Castiel replies urgently.

“Better explain then,” Dean says, planting his feet.

“Telling is more difficult, it will be easier to show you.”

“Show us what?” Sam says.

“The life you left, the one you were stolen from, and what home really is.”

Dean snorts, derision clear, while Sam experiences a pang of loss somewhere deep beneath his breast bone for something he can’t name. He isn’t thinking of his apartment, or his office, or his belongings. His mind is almost as blank as their surroundings.

“You’re crock full of shit, you don’t have anything we want,” Dean spits.

“We’ll see,” is the only response Castiel gives, before he’s pulling them along and they have to follow.

When the vial of mystery substance appears again Sam smiles, wondering what Dean will make of what’s about to happen. He watches for Dean’s reaction closely, taking in the whole scene with relish. Somewhere inside himself he questions why he cares what Dean thinks, when he should be thinking about how they can evade Castiel and break free. And yet the look of bafflement and wonder on Dean’s face when the ash settles into an otherwise invisible archway is pleasant all the same, even though he can’t place why.


	3. Dreamscape

The other side of the doorway is blinding white, brighter than anything Sam has ever seen. At least, it feels that way. He shields his eyes and blinks furiously, caught off-guard. In the dark and gloom for so many hours he had started to wonder if they’d ever step outdoors again.

“When did the sun rise?” he asks, more than a little incredulously. He thought some sunlight would have made it down to whatever basement they were in, unless they were in tunnels? He tries to think back, to remember where they started walking from, trying to place what was near his apartment. It’s unsettling that he can’t instantly remember the streets near his home. And then he recalls that he was knocked out, and he doesn’t know how long for, or where he woke up. It’s more than a little unnerving that he forgot that incredibly important detail, even for a few seconds.

He squints, looking at the world around them, a wide street paved with yellow-grey stone and lined with brick buildings.

“What day is it?” Dean asks, confusion on his own face to match Sam’s.

“It doesn’t matter,” Castiel says, gripping the ropes twined around them and urging them forward with a gentle tug.

“Doesn’t matter?” Dean parrots back, words hissing through his teeth. “Of course it matters!”

“My estimate is the February ninth in the year twenty seventeen, but it has very little effect on the here and now.”

“How do you figure that?” Sam asks. The pavement is smooth under the tread of his feet, and he walks ahead until he can place a hand on Cas’s chest, he looks down to watch Cas’s feet and make sure he stops, and see cracks below their shoes. Which is odd, the ground feels solid.

“We are not in a… _dimension_ that the time — or date — has any bearing on. We are a step removed from reality.”

“You’re a step removed from reality,” Dean mutters. Sam levels Dean with a look and he rolls his eyes and goes silent.

“Okay, say we believe you… we understand you’re not seeing things the same way we are — fine, that’s fine. Can you tell us where we are, or why? Let us… let’s get to a place where we understand each other,” he says gently.

The street is quiet, with a rustling of wind through the trees as the only background noise. Which is strange, as there are no trees in sight. A car rolls by, silently, two people inside staring straight ahead, and neither one with their hands on the wheel. Dean takes a step toward it, eyes bugging out of his head, and looks back at Sam with concern written clear across his features.

Sam spies movement further down the avenue, where it… it tapers to a narrow walkway between overhanging buildings. He’s sure it didn’t look like that before. He blinks and the image flickers, he peers harder and the colours shift, just a little, rippling across the stonework like computer graphics buffering and reloading.

He rubs his eyes, hard. How tired is he?

“Did we step into some sort of stepford suburb or something?” Dean asks, peeking in the window of a cafe to find it packed full of people, milling at tables and counters, Sam follows his gaze as a cat streaks between people's legs and _barks._

“Hurry, it isn’t wise to stay here, you stand out too much,” Cas says, and he pulls them along. They follow, dumb struck at the oddity of, well, everything.

“You didn’t answer my questions,” Sam says minutes later as they stop in an alley that wasn’t an alley but a park when they entered. His head hurts. “Why is everything swimming?”

“Later, Sam, please,” Cas sounds pained. Cas. Not Castiel. Cas sounds pained, he should do something about that. Shouldn’t he?

“I gotta get five minutes,” Dean says, looking up at the clouds scudding overhead that repeat in patterns, broken up by streaks of lightning that seem to come from nowhere.

Castiel forces a door open and pulls them inside a dim room, lit overhead by a bare bulb; they stand beneath it in a three pointed formation, all squinting up at it as it flickers. There are no windows, and the walls are a sickly grey. Piles of old sheets and laundry are scattered across the floor and there’s only the one door that they entered through.

“You should sleep,” Castiel says eventually. Sam’s mind is spinning, and he feels untethered, drifting, so tired he can barely think of a reason to protest. He’s sure he didn’t feel this tired before they left…. before. The other place, the dark place.

“I don’t understand,” he mumbles.

“Nor, frankly, do I,” Castiel says heavily. “There was no telling how this would affect you and I am, as you would say, winging it.”

“Because that makes everything clearer,” Dean says, sliding down the wall and closing his eyes.

“Sleeping here might well re-calibrate something so your minds can process what you’re seeing. And besides that I don’t think you can keep walking in this state.”

“You’re going to lie down and sleep here?” Sam asks Dean, as he sees the other man give over to exhaustion and prostrate himself on the floor.

“Apparently.”

He watches as Dean grabs for a dusty sheet and pulls it under his head like a pillow. “You’re not worried about sleeping like this?”

“I know, this place is pretty nasty, but a guy can ignore germs and dust for once when there’s not much other choice.”

“I meant sleeping in front of _him.” _Sam juts a thumb at Castiel, not bothering to lower his voice, the room is so small he couldn’t be discreet if he wanted to.

“Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, it can’t be avoided. If it makes you feel better I haven’t woken up dead yet.”

Sam rolls his eyes and settles down against the wall next to Dean, he glares at Castiel for a long time but the man is just sat there with his eyes closed as though meditating. Good to know their kidnapper is a spiritual person, because that makes everything better.

He sleeps, but not well, struggling with consciousness what feels like every few minutes. Never sure if he should be striving for it or shying away from it. It’s easier not to think, or worry, or process, but reality creeps in anyway. Long black expanses and something at his back and terror at his throat. And then peace, calm, Dean’s sneer, Castiel’s long coat. All snippets, all mixed up together.

He startles to full wakefulness and sees the serene expression on the man in front of him, coupled with the soft snores of Dean’s slumber and momentarily finds the sense of wrong dissipating. Safety, it feels like, surety, familiarity. And then Cas opens his eyes, and he jolts, clenching his jaw and scowling.

“Can’t sleep?” Castiel asks.

“Can’t you?”

“I don’t require it.”

“Huh, sure.”

“Believe me or not it doesn’t change the truth.”

“What truth? What is it you really want, and why can’t we get away from you?”

“The ropes?” Castiel asks, surprise raising his eyebrows. “I be-spelled them.”

“....right. Well they’re uncomfortable, just so you know.” They’re not, really, just a basic harness across his upper body, but the thought of them is uncomfortable in his mind so he doesn’t bother making the distinction.

“Oh cry me a river,” Dean grumbles, scrubbing his face. “Can’t you bitch at some less ungodly hour?”

“Don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you too,” Sam shoots back, Dean only shrugs as he rises and stretches.

“You should eat, and then we can be on our way.” Castiel says, unzipping his backpack.

“Gonna need a bathroom or at least a bucket too unless you wanna watch or something.” Dean says with a smug grin.

Castiel falters in rooting through his pack, and gestures to a door Sam doesn’t remember seeing when they came in. Now that he’s looking, there’s a third door that didn’t exist before either. And a desk, and a few scattered boxes that are filled with junk.

“What the—”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Castiel says softly.

They freshen up in a windowless bathroom, the ropes conveniently dropped from Castiel's hold. And they eat, begrudgingly, the food he provides. There’s very little talking, and no sense of relief.

“I could remove the ropes now, if you prefer. If you’ll let me do some… alterations and lay some wards on you.”

Sam catches Dean’s eye, and gets a tiny shrug and tilts his head in return. If Cas thinks he can unbind them and they’ll still follow him, if he thinks he can turn them loose and they won’t fight back… this could be their shot.

“Fine, whatever, no touching my special parts,” Dean says, crossing his arms protectively across his chest.

Castiel looks at Sam for confirmation and he nods tersely, eyeing the doors around them.

It’s strange, when it happens, a burning through his chest that feels like ash inside his lungs and a blue light that doesn’t emanate from anywhere but still fills his vision for a couple of hasty blinks. There’s a tug against his rib cage and Castiel grunts in satisfaction, lowering his hand that had hovered near to Sam’s midriff and the one touching his forehead.

And then it doesn’t feel like anything, and he watches as Dean undergoes the same bizarre treatment, and Castiel removes the rope harnesses from them both. And then he makes his move.

Turns at a run, grabs for the door handle and makes it all of two steps on the other side before _something _pulls him up short. He cries out, stumbling backwards, and rubs at his sternum where it feels like a fishhook was caught through his bones.

Dean crashes into the back of him, curses and they turn as one to survey a rather amused looking Castiel.

“That isn’t going to work.”

“Why the hell not?” Dean demands.

“What did you _do?”_ Sam asks, feeling this is more important.

“I bound you to me, and each other, so we cannot get separated. The need for proximity won’t last forever, but it will work for the time being.”

“And what if we overpower you and make you undo it?” Dean says, squaring his shoulders.

“Feel free to try.”

So they do, they double team him, both raising fists, both surging forward. He deflects and pushes them aside, never striking back, but leaving them both tilting away and their punches and kicks knocked out of range.

They go until both he and Dean are breathless, winded and bruised, but Castiel isn’t ruffled at all, hasn’t even broken a sweat.

“I tap out,” Dean says hands on his knees and shaking. “Do what you want, I’m yours for the taking.”

It’s wry, defeated, and yet not full of fear, there’s almost respect there. It makes Sam angry, how can he just give over to this person who took them… took, stole… he shakes his head, he can’t recall the sequence of events.

“What are you?” he asks quietly.

“An angel.” Castiel says it simply, with no embellishment or charm, pure fact.

Dean laughs then, doubling over a second time. Sam would join him but he’s too concerned with his missing memories and his loss of time. He has a life,a job, and a body that wants to _leave._

“You won’t get away with this, you can’t win against us forever.”

Castiel opens his hands, an apology without words, and then he walks forwards and the pull between his ribs forces Sam to follow.

* * *

Wrongness pervades Sam’s every thought as they pick their way through a seemingly endless series of rooms. A courtyard follows that’s knee deep with water that doesn’t come from, or go to, anywhere. Then a field, then more buildings, and without warning the landscape outside the window is that of a large city with skyscrapers rising into the distance.

There’s something like a migraine pounding in his head but it feels more like altitude sickness, or asphyxiation. Only his lungs are full and he isn’t in pain. It doesn’t make sense.

“Where are we?” Dean asks, for the dozenth time.

Cas peers out a window, “Looks like New York.”

“What the fuck?” Sam mutters, keeping pace and trying to look outside all at once.

“How long have we been travelling for? I’ve never seen the Big Apple look like this,” Dean says.

It’s too bright up top, too dark down below, and a gray scudding mess near the pavement that makes everything murky.

“Looks a bit too much like Gotham down there,” Sam muses.

“Batman fan?” Dean asks.

“Not particularly, always more of a Superman kind of dude.”

“Yeah, you look the type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Clean cut, strong arms, bet you saved a damsel or two in your life.”

“Thanks?”

“Me on the other hand, got that dark and brooding thing going on.”

“Right, all tragedy none of the lightness.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Dean winks.

They talk, bantering back and forth and Castiel leaves them to it. Only his silent laughter, and small shake of his head any indication that he hears them at all. It’s good, for a while, a way to ignore what’s in front of his eyes. The way things keep dissolving in his peripheral vision, the way sound becomes distorted at regular intervals. The way they end up in room after room that don’t make sense in any logical building plan, and how Castiel is reluctant to lead them outside.

He can ignore it all, as long as it keeps ignoring him.

* * *

As the afternoon wears on — if it truly is afternoon, which is hard to tell in the ever-changing light that slips between deep dark and eye-strain bright — Sam feels his mind beginning to unravel. He’d kept it close, kept it hidden as best he could but the impossibilities he was seeing, the act of being taken hostage on a journey he couldn’t understand, all crowd together until he’s bowing under the weight.

“I… I’m going to throw up,” he manages to choke out, leaning against the wall and squeezing his eyes closed.

“Hey, hey man you okay, what’s wrong?” Dean asks, pressing close, touching his forehead. He swipes a hand down his face and opens his eyes.

“This can’t be real.”

Dean looks sideways at Castiel, having some silent conversation that Sam can’t be bothered to try and piece together.

“Do something,” Dean urges.

“The best way to fix this is to keep moving, there isn’t much more I _can_ do. Human minds aren’t meant to take all this in during their waking state.”

“All _what _in?” Sam demands, suddenly angry, furious. “What the hell have you done to us?”

They’re standing in a long narrow corridor, windows framing the space every couple of feet that look out on a wide city street. Something swoops past, shadow-wreathed and screeching and they all duck away from the window. Sam knows then, knows with a surety he feels deep in his bones that he’s dreaming, the kind of dreams he’s been running through his entire life, that this man in front of him has warped his mind somehow and it’s all _wrong wrong wrong._

“Did you drug us? Is that it? We’re not really here you’ve got us in some basement somewhere doing who knows what while we’re out for the count?”

Castiel takes a step back, shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”

“You gotta give us something, you drag us into this mess, miles away from anything we know and expect us to just go along?” Dean joins Sam’s side, baring his teeth. “We humoured you while we couldn’t do anything else, but now, you need to man up and take the consequences.”

“What consequences? What do you really think you could do to dissuade me from saving you?”

“Saving us! _Saving us?”_ Dean scoffs.

“You’re the one doing this, you’ve fed us some hallucinogen or hypnotised us and you know what _we’re going to fight back_,_” _Sam shouts.

He surges forward and pushes on Castiel’s chest trying to slam him backwards, but the man doesn’t move at all.

“You already tried this,” Castiel intones, catching Sam’s raised fist and twisting his arm until he’s on his knees.

“I don’t care, let me wake up! Let me up!”

And then Dean is there, yanking him backwards, shoving Castiel aside. The one moves the other and Sam watches stunned as Castiel allows Dean to pull him away and get him up.

“You’re not gonna fix this with your fists Sammy!”

He startles at the gall of Dean being so familiar as to give him a _nickname_ but shakes it off.

“Well I can’t fix it with my mind because nothing makes sense, I need answers!”

There’s banging nearby now, loud like a sputtering engine stuck rolling around inside a washing machine, and the sky outside is crackling and disintegrating to reform in tiny squares of color.

“This isn’t good,” Cas says.

“You think!” Dean replies, pulling Sam to his feet.

“No, I mean, this,” Cas waves a hand out the window and they all watch for a few seconds as reality bends and warps and there’s a small _whoomph_ of back-blast that rocks the building. “You’re disrupting the natural order, we shouldn’t be here for so long.”

“This is madness. I don’t… this can't be _real._”

“Reality doesn’t have much to do with it,” Cas replies.

“Hey, Buddy, y’know it would help if you stopped speaking in riddles. The mysterious act got old about three days ago.”

Cas rolls his eyes and looks around, to where a door isn’t, and then is. “Follow,” he says quietly.

They don’t have a choice but to do just that.

The room on the other side of the door is large, ornate, and contains one long mahogany table but no chairs. The white walls inlaid with gold patterns and baroque designs are imposing, so out of place beside the drab little corridor they came from. Sam’s head spins and he slumps against the wall, sliding down until he can rest his knees on his elbows and his head in his hands.

“Can you calm him down?” he hears Castiel ask Dean.

“I am calm,” he replies, looking up to glare.

Castiel looks as though he doesn’t believe it, but nods, “Stay here, I’m going to look for a path we can take.”

Dean throws up his hands as blue light curls slowly out from both of their chests, leaving a thin trail-like rope of light that Cas presses into the floor. He leaves, swishing out the opposite door in a flurry. Dean takes a few steps away and reaches the end of the tether, grunts, and circles back around to sit beside Sam.

“This room look familiar to you?” Dean asks, looking around.

“Not… especially. Do you spend much time inside fancy hotels and old ballrooms?”

“No, I just feel like I’ve been somewhere like this before.”

“Maybe you saw it in a movie, or went to a wedding somewhere nice.”

“Not really big on period pieces, or weddings for that matter. Don’t you think this whole place reminds you of something? Like there’ll be something you recognise just around the next corner?”

“Yes, and that’s the problem. Nothing is real.”

“I’m real,” Dean says, clapping him on the shoulder. Sam sighs and nods, willing to believe that at least. “Stone number one, this is happening, so let’s deal with it.”

“What now?” Sam asks, unsure why he expects Dean to have an answer.

“We wait.”

“And?”

“Hang on let me just check my magic eight ball, oh no wait, I left it in my other pants,” Dean says with a roll of his eyes.

“Why aren’t you more freaked out?”

“Oh, I’m plenty freaked. I just keep that shit locked up where it doesn’t have to bother anyone else.”

“So what, you’re just going to go along with this, with whatever plan he has even if it kills you?”

“Did I say that? I’m just not wasting energy on a fight I can’t win. I was with him for two days before you were in the picture you don’t think I tried everything that’s running through your mind right now?”

“I can’t do nothing!”

“No, but you can do the smart thing, and work with me — and him — until there’s a plausible way out. You look like a smart guy, don’t go acting all dumb out of fear.”

“I am a smart guy,” Sam mumbles to the floor.

“Yeah, tell me.”

Sam frowns, and Dean waves a hand. “Elaborate a little, let me know that I’m not stuck in this thing with a random stranger. Job, house, kids, mortgage, dog? Fill in some details.”

“Errr, I’m a lawyer?”

“So, super smart guy.”

“Kinda,” Sam scratches at the back of his head. “I finished in the top five of my class, graduated with honours. Got a swanky job that eats up all my time and energy.”

“Big firm?”

“Not too big, small enough I could get myself noticed, make an impression.”

“Which I'm sure you did with that winning smile of yours.”

“Right. Yeah, made a nice couple of enemies too.”

“Put away some bad guys?”

“Well yeah, that’s the gig, but it’s the ones who represent them that are the problem.” He takes a deep breath, noting all Dean’s curious attention focused on him and launches into as brief a description as possible about his life. About Morningstar and Co and the bitter rivalry between himself and their lead big-shot attorneys, about how they always seem to go head to head, how it takes all he has to fight their every devious move.

“So, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands for all that other stuff, relationships, kids and what have you. I just focus on what I’m doing and everything else falls to the wayside a bit.”

Dean nods along, like he has the whole time, “You love it though right?”

“Mostly,” Sam smiles. “At least, I feel like I’m doing some good in the world, and I like that. I just wish it wasn’t filled with such crooked people.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“No, it’s just, I agree with you but not everyone who ends up on the other side of your courtroom is evil. Some people just have bad strokes of luck.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Yeah, in a way. I’m a parole officer, work with the young ones, try and get them back on the straight and narrow, or at the very least try and keep them off the streets.”

“So you know the system, you’ve seen how it can fuck everyone over?” Sam asks eagerly. This, this is familiar territory, and he feels at home and calm and animated all at once.

“In abundance, and it ain’t pretty on the other side. You lawyers get to wipe your hands and go about your lives once that verdict is given, it’s the rest of us who pick up the pieces.”

“Hey…”

“No, I’m not saying it’s your fault, but someone has to be there at the tail end when the slate is wiped clean and these young’uns need putting back on their feet. That’s me, always pulling them from the wreckage.”

“Like feeling like the hero then?” Sam jibes, nudging him in the ribs.

“You betcha, might as well make myself someone for them to look up to, I know the deal they’ve been dealt. Me and these wayward kids man, I gotta hand it to them they know how to keep a guy on his toes.”

Dean gets up, and brushes invisible dirt from his clothes. “Speaking of, you notice how he’s always on high alert?” Dean jabs a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of the door, and Cas.

“Yeah?”

“I figure that’s how we get him, we need him to relax and think we trust him, and then he’ll be less likely to see it coming.”

“Any idea how we do that?”

“Well not throwing punches would be a good start.”

“Right.”

They lapse into silence and Sam realises the ringing in his ears has stopped, there’s also no static in the air anymore. There’s the sound of birdsong coming from somewhere, and then footsteps before Castiel reappears.

* * *

The entire day that follows is strained, but civil. Sam can’t help feeling like he’s burrowing deeper and deeper into some kind of stupor. The world shifts around them, buildings reshaping themselves as they pass, the light flicking from night to day at startling intervals, only to switch back again just as his eyes adjust. Things loom in the shadows.

Impossibilities. Spectacles. Nightmares.

All of it nightmares.

If he isn’t asleep, he’s going mad. Or the world is ending. Or maybe both.

But Dean is there beside him, cracking jokes. And Castiel walks ahead, tan coat a consistency that he latches on to. If the man leading them is unfazed and resolute he feels like he might not need to fear that reality crashing around him is going to bring him harm. There’s something stalwart and steadfast here, a feeling a little like hope that kindles in his mind when he sees Castiel ahead. When he turns, strong jaw, careful gaze, a curt nod, it’s a recognition of _togetherness _that doesn’t fit with the situation.

He ignores that as much as he ignores everything else around him. Self examination doesn’t feel like the thing to do right now.

Castiel pauses abruptly, staring ahead and and squinting. “This, I did not expect.”

“What?” Dean says, barrelling forward.

“Are there flying fish now?” Sam asks, “Or wait, let me guess, flying pigs? Is it time for a bacon sandwich?”

Dean throws him a _look_ that seems to say “knock it off” and he shrugs and scuffs his shoe in the dirt. There’s a house ahead, blue peeling paint and a porch and overgrown plants crowding up against the framework. A middle-of-nowhere sort of house whose owner clearly had more important things to do than property maintenance. The sign above the gate reads _Singer’s Salvage_

There’s a highway overpass to Sam’s left, and a skyscraper to his right, and the air smells like the ocean. This doesn’t fit.

“I think your presence is beginning to affect the realm,” Cas states, worry flickering behind his eyes.

“Which means?” Dean teases out.

“It means I’m glad we are leaving.”

“Leaving where?” Sam asks, gesturing around them. “Got a bus to catch or something?”

“Leaving this dimension.”

At their blank looks Castiel sighs dramatically and turns to face them. “You haven’t noticed? The inconsistencies, the… improbabilities, the way reality bends around us? The way your emotions have expanded to fill the space around us and shape what we see, what we encounter?”

“Of course we’ve noticed,” Sam refrains from shouting but it’s a near thing. “Why do you think that _I_ think that you’ve drugged us and I’m only dreaming?”

“Because you _are_ dreaming,” Castiel says forcefully. “Or as close as two humans can get whilst awake. This entire… fraction of the universe is devoted entirely to the worlds and experiences people give life to while they’re dreaming. We are, in effect, inside the collective dreamscape of every sleeping person on Earth.”

“That is some batshit nonsense,” Dean laughs with a shake of his head.

“Is it? Do you often choose not to believe what’s right in front of you?” Cas says.

“Actually yeah, if what’s in front of me is a pile of crap, I ignore the hell out of it,” Dean replies, dropping his pack and folding his arms.

“Guys,” Sam says quietly.

“What other explanation do you have then, for all of this? For the magic you’ve seen? What wisdom makes you think you know more?”

“Well let’s try not making up fairy stories for starters!”

“Guys, stop!” Sam steps between them, urging Dean backwards, who doesn’t budge, and Castiel to back down, who does. He rubs his thumb over his palm, focusing on the feel of his skin, the pressure, the touch. “Look, I don’t know if I believe any of this, and it’s not like we have reason to trust you really…”

“You can say that again,” Dean snarls.

“But! But, if leaving here is something we can do, let’s just do that, please? Before my mind turns to goo.”

“I want you to know, I’m not making this up,” Castiel continues. “I need you to believe that. Believe me.” It’s pleading and urgent and Sam almost claps him on the back in reassurance, fighting the instinct before his hand can take flight. He doesn’t feel like comforting their… whatever Cas is. He said angel, and Sam is truly trying to fight the idea that he might not have been lying.

“So, you said this was unexpected? Where is this?” he asks instead.

Cas glances back at Dean before he starts speaking. “A home, somewhere you both have a connection to. The landscape has shifted to incorporate your own unconscious thoughts and desires.”

“Can I request a burger then, if the universe is taking orders?” Dean says, but he stomps ahead, toward the house and Cas and Sam walk after him.

It’s a fairly large house, empty and echoing. Wooden floors, piles of books. Sam itches to sit down and read, but the first book he picks up is blank at a glance and full of incomprehensible squiggles the next moment. He shuts it with a grimace.

Castiel leads them down a staircase on the other side of a locked white wooden door and they descend into a basement. It prickles familiarity at the base of Sam’s neck and he rubs the sensation away. It’s musty. Dirty. Not cold, he hasn’t been cold or warm since… since before they arrived… here. In the light again, after the dark.

The dark which was… which was… before this. After… away from home. He screws up his face trying to remember, pulled only back to the present at the screech of metal as Dean pulls open a nearby door. “What the hell is this place?” Dean asks, peering into a circular room with metal walls and a grubby looking floor with a large fan in the ceiling.

“A panic room,” Sam replies without thinking.

Dean nods in approval.

Castiel is stood very still, with his palm outstretched. Sam jerks his head at Cas, gesturing at Dean, to see if he has any idea what’s going on. Dean shrugs, pulling a face.

“Cas — Castiel? What… now?” he asks, when Dean won’t.

“This should be sufficient, my preliminary findings were correct, we seem to have headed in the right direction.”

“Sure, okay. Towards….?”

“A decent exit point, somewhere weak enough to punch a hole in reality. Though that is a somewhat brutal metaphor for the procedure.”

Procedure. Right.

“Are you going to do that… thing again?” Dean asks wearily, shoulders slumped in resignation.

“It is our current mode of travel,” Cas replies, brisk.

“And I don’t suppose suggesting going outside, and hitching a ride back home, would be met with any kind of appreciation?”

Cas bristles, and draws up to his full height. “If you refuse to listen to anything I’ve just said—”

“Not refusing,” Sam cuts in. “Just, it’s a lot to take in. Please get us out of here.” He might not understand everything Castiel implies is true, but this place — the house, the area, the entire lay of land they’ve seen in the last day and a half — has been needling uncomfortably at him the entire time. Like being trapped in a dream, lucid and aware of it, but unable to do anything. It’s getting to the point where he can’t deny what he’s experienced.

It’s an uncomfortable thought. Either he’s crazy, or dreaming, or magic is _real._

“Very well.”

The vial of black substance, now visibly emptier, is raised again and the powder falls in an arch. A slice of black just big enough to walk into, and they do.


	4. Elemental Realm

It’s twilight when he blinks his eyes open on the other side of the suffocating black doorway. Twilight and murky, with the scent of smoke in the air. For a few seconds it doesn’t register as strange that they’re no longer inside, they stepped through a doorway, of course they ended up outside. It takes his mind a moment to remember they were in a basement, a basement they entered in the middle of the day.

He knows then, with a bone deep surety, that there’s more to the world than he could have imagined. There’s two men beside him and he turns to survey them, taking in the rough looking jacket and flannel of one and the long trench coat and alert stance of the others. He’s about to introduce himself, and ask what they’re doing here, when his mind stutters and remembers he knows them.

“Everyone got all their fingers and toes?” Dean asks.

Cas squints at Dean, and then looks at him. He feels anger, swelling up from nowhere and he’s not sure why.

“Why did you bring us here?” he asks.

“And where is here?” Dean adds.

Cas steps towards them both and places a finger on each of their foreheads. They both let him and there’s a jolt of familiarity at the contact.

“Hmm,” Cas hums. “I think things are beginning to realign.”

“Did you just take our temperature or something?” Dean says, swatting the hand away. “Wanna check under my tongue too?”

“Do you feel unwell?” Cas asks.

“I’m not sure what I feel, just… can we rest soon?”

“What about you Sam?” Castiel inquires.

“I feel woozy, yes, and exhausted.” And confused, he adds mentally, and forgetful.

Cas hums again, and turns, and walks forward. They trudge after him, there being not much else to do than to follow. They seem to be in the middle of a peat bog, with small fires cracking in the distance giving them markers of flame to avoid and points of light to see by. There’s a large mountain what looks to be a few miles away that rises stark and black against the growing darkness of the sky.

They keep it to their left, marching onwards, and only when the ground shakes and a massive rumble of thunder echoes from the surrounding air around and the ground beneath them does Sam wonder if it’s not a mountain at all, if it’s a volcano.

“What the hell?” Dean mutters, standing with his arms out for balance and looking around like there might be a good place to run to in the midst of all the wild nothing that surrounds them.

“Hiking up a volcano doesn’t sound like the best plan, Cas,” Sam says louder.

“Hiking at all sounds like a dumb plan,” Dean adds.

“We’re heading away from it, don’t worry,” comes Cas’s reply. “And it won’t erupt in any case.”

Sam leans in to whisper in Dean’s ear, "This seem like a strange spot to camp in to you?"

"This isn't camping," Dean mutters back. Which Sam agrees, camping would be _fun_ and they'd have tents and gear and maybe marshmallows. "But sticking with him seems to be our best bet."

“How do you figure that?”

“Well he seems to be the only one who knows what we’re doing for starters. Man, I’ve never felt so off kilter.” Dean rubs at his eyes, and shouts ahead: “Still need some shut eye, you know?”

Cas nods, ushering them faster and Dean digs into his backpack for something to eat. Sam does the same, and worries a little at how many things have gone from his pack compared with when they began.

Began from… from the start of their journey. How many days has it been? Maybe it’s just today and he’s so tired he can’t think straight. No, he recalls with a jolt, they already slept once and walked through a whole night and a whole day. He’s got three full water bottles left, and several dried packets of food. And some fresh fruit packed in small boxes. If he just knew how long they would be on the road for…

If they just had a car…

“Hey, you said you worked with cars right?” he asks Dean.

“Mmm, yeah? I do a lot of driving too. Why?”

“Wouldn’t this journey be quicker in a vehicle?”

“What… umm.” Dean shakes his head. “No, I mean yeah but I’m not going to steal one. I’m in law enforcement.”

“You said you were a mechanic.”

“Did I? I don’t think… no I just, my uncle is the mechanic. He has a body shop, or… and a salvage yard? I just help out when things get busy.”

“Well which is it a body shop or a salvage yard?”

Dean shoots Sam a sideways look and Sam grabs his shoulder when he sees the distress on Dean’s face. “What?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s no big deal, it’s late, I think we need to sleep.”

“Right.”

Neither of them say anything and Sam wonders if Dean’s thinking the same sort of things he is-- that there’s something wrong; that maybe they’re ill, or injured, or not where they should be.

What worries him most is that he can’t remember where he should be, if it’s not here.

* * *

They find a place to rest eventually, in a grove of gnarled and leafless trees that sits above a hollow of earth. The hot, heavy air of the bog seems to be dissipating, making it easier to breathe. It’s still warm though and they both take their jackets off to use as a pillow. Sleep takes him quickly, and night passes uneventfully, while his body finally relaxes in the deep nothing of mindless exhaustion.

Daylight dawns and Sam wakes in a rush, wondering how he slept so peacefully. He didn’t dream at all, didn’t wake in a cold sweat at the situation. He sees Castiel standing steadfast several paces away from them, looking out into the horizon. He turns when he hears Sam stir and nods hello.

“Mornin’,” Sam says, throat scratchy with sleep. “Do you get a kick out of watching us sleep?”

“I do not require sleep, I thought it pertinent to keep watch.”

“Right, you’re a robot who can function without sleep. Where do we plug you in? Can we get a reboot maybe?”

Castiel’s face falls, and he looks at his shoes. “I wish you didn’t hate me.”

Sam’s heart clenches in his chest, he doesn’t want to hate either, and honestly he’s not sure he does. Mostly he’s just confused. “I just want to understand,” he says instead.

“You will, in time, you will.”

“Can you tell us about yourself, maybe? I don’t… I don’t remember if you did before, or—” he looks away, swallowing, unsure what he’s going to say.

“Are you having trouble remembering things Sam?”

“Yes.” it makes him want to cry, he’s not sure which things are memories, and which are dreams. He can’t remember when he was last at home, or who he last spoke to before these two. “I wish you had drugged us, at least that would make sense.”

“Your life as you knew it, there was something not right with it, correct?”

“How did you... did you spy on me?”

“No, Sam, I just know this to be true.”

“Yes, alright, I never felt like I fit, like I was a big fraud and just pretending. But that’s… that’s just adulthood right? No one knows what they’re doing it’s all just an act. Just because I couldn’t get through the day without daydreaming of another life doesn’t mean mine was _wrong_.”

He’s vehement, sure he’s right and yet also feels like he’s floundering because he can’t remember now what he used to daydream about or what his office looked like. There’s a haze of grey between him and his past, and he keeps trying to reach through the mist to make it solid again.

“Things will fall into place, you won’t feel like this forever,” Castiel says, turning away. The thought doesn’t bring much comfort.

“Can you two hash it out when I’ve had my solid four hours?” Dean gripes, burrowing his face into his makeshift pillow and then punching it into submission when it squishes up against his eyes.

“You’ve had seven hours, actually. Though I understand that it’s hard to tell here,” Cas replies.

“Huh,” Dean says, stretching and sitting up with a scowl. “Guess I just need coffee then, don’t suppose that’s on the agenda while we’re camping.”

“This isn’t camping,” Sam points out. Camping would require tents and _fun._

“Who crawled up your nose and took a shit?” Dean asks raising his eyebrows.

“Maybe I just didn’t sleep well because you snore like a bear.”

Dean looks scandalised and Sam can’t help but laugh.

“Very funny, ha ha,” he grouches.

“Perhaps you two would like to stop annoying each other and come look, I have a feeling you might start to believe in magic just a little more today.”

Sam wanders blearily up the short slope, curious, but not expecting much. What he finds knocks the breath from his body. The land below them is mostly reds and browns, stark in the daylight and rolling away from him unbroken as far as the eye can see. It’s covered with small smoking mounds and flickers of heat that sizzle in the air, mirages that look like flames and the smaller — but no less obvious — shape of the volcano in the distance.

But more astounding than that are the… creatures that have gathered. He sees only glimpses of them as the peer around stunted growths of trees and hide behind rocks. But some creep closer, heads cocked and sniffing. Some are long and slithering, bright oranges and deep blues with forked snake tongues that hiss between their teeth, others look almost gnome-like with skin that appears like rock and stone.

Every atom of air seems to stop in its tracks as his mind tries to come up with some explanation. He takes half a halting step forward, mouth agape and eyes wide. They’re _beautiful._ Ethereal and completely unreal, so much more solid and tangible than any CGI animation he’s ever seen. Flawed in places, dirty, skittish and alert and _real._

“What…” is all he can say.

He turns, finds Dean several steps back with a face like thunder, scowling and uncertain.

“Care to explain?” Dean says.

“These are fire elementals,” Cas says, not even faltering. “This is their realm, we’re currently in the vicinity of fire and earth, so you can see how they overlap, just a little.”

“I don’t…” Sam begins, and stops again. “How? Wh-what?” he stammers and then laughs. “I don’t want to believe but…” he gestures and a few of the more nervous critters scurry away.

“Are they dangerous?” Dean pipes up.

“Not in the slightest, unless you plan on trying to steal their fire,” Cas says with a note of humor in his tone. He crouches down and extends a hand, leaving it proffered up in invitation. “They really can be very friendly.”

Dean grumbles something and Sam ignores him.

“How?” he breathes out, not wanting to startle them further.

“How what?” Cas asks, looking up. One creature comes close enough to sniff Cas’s hand before running away, kicking dirt up behind it.

“How can this be real, how can this all exist and nobody _know?”_

“Some people do know, and there’s so much more to the world than even this. You’ll see, it’ll all come back to you.” Cas standsand wipes his hands on his coat.

“All what?” Sam asks, finally tearing his eyes away from the sight.

“Let’s not all turn our backs on them, aye?” Dean calls from several feet away.

“They won’t harm you, they’re only curious,” Cas says. “And your lives Sam, all your knowledge of the world and the intricacies of existence will come back. I will do my utmost to keep you safe until then.”

Dean makes a disgruntled sound and Sam looks over to see him wary and keeping his distance. Even as Sam watches he tries to take another step back, but is pulled short with a tug that Sam feels in his own chest. He rubs absentmindedly at his sternum.

“That’s funny, seeing as you’re the one who brought us here and put us in harm's way in the first place,” Dean snarls.

Cas looks guilty for a second, and then indignant. “For once, Dean, perhaps do not speak about what you don’t know. I know that’s difficult for you, you like having the last word.”

“You can have all the last words you want, are we leaving or what?” Dean asks, grumpy and reaching for his pack.

“You could come look properly, aren’t you interested?” Sam says.

“I’m interested in getting the hell away.”

“Not much of an animal person,” Cas says, almost wistful. “I suppose this isn’t really your wheelhouse.”

“No, my wheelhouse would have actual wheels and an engine and maybe something concrete I could touch with my own hands. This is fantasy stuff, man, it’s… I don’t. Give me something I can point a gun at and know where to shoot and I’m good, is all I’m saying.”

“I could stay here for days,” Sam argues. “There’s got to be a ton of things I could learn that no one has ever documented!”

“Well, you do that, I’m heading out.”

“We all have to stick together, remember?” Castiel says.

“Yeah, because you say so, we’re not kids you can stick on a leash and control you know. We should get a say!” Dean shouts.

Sam watches the creatures skitter back and hide themselves away at the raised voices and he sighs.

“Well now you’ve done it, nothing else to see,” he snaps as he walks past Dean and picks his way up the opposite slope. Nothing slows him down, so he knows they must be following.

* * *

A couple of hours out from their sleeping spot the ground has turned from rocky red stone to hard earth sparse with grass. The further they go the more the grass covers until there’s a swathe of long stemmed stalks and they’re wading through grass that waves higher than their knees. The expanse of land before them is as flat and unmarked as any Sam has ever seen.

There’s no wind he can feel on his face or in his hair but the grass bobs, bends and sweeps sideways in currents and eddies that make it look almost like the ocean.

“So, what’s this? I mean, if that was the meeting of fire and earth back there where are we now?” he asks.

“I believe we’re in the realms of Air Elementals. Feel how pure the air is, how clean, and there’s nothing to obstruct the flight and flow,” Cas gestures from his spot at the head of their trail. “It’s open sky for miles.”

By late afternoon Sam is giddy, laughing at every swoosh of air and running his hands constantly over the grass stalks. He’s exhausted too, and anytime he thinks of anything but the wonder around him he feels sour, so he just doesn’t think of it. He starts seeing shapes, blue and white swathes of colour that glide across his field of vision.

“Can you see those?” he asks.

“Those are wind sprites. The most basic of Air Elementals, and the most curious as they travel the four corners of the earth.” Cas answers him.

“The earth doesn’t have corners,” Dean pipes up. He’s barely looked up for hours, watching his step over the ground more than anything else.

“They raise their young on earth, where they can get used to the currents of the wind, they only come back here as adolescents. They seem curious to see you here. The more carefree and open you become, the more likely they are to want to play.” Cas remarks.

“I’m curious as to why we’re here too,” Dean says tiredly. “Can’t we leave yet?”

“Why so eager to leave?” Sam asks, “Don’t you feel at peace here?”

“No, and you know why, because my feet hurt and my knees are sore and there’s literally not a soul in sight. I want a beer, and a dive bar and a game of pool and every other thing that civilisation has to offer.” Dean stalks ahead faster. “And some frickin’ answers too,” he throws over his shoulder.

It brings Sam back down to earth, and he sighs, watching as the spirits he could see pop out of his limited sight as he focuses on everything that’s wrong. But he catches up with Dean and spends the rest of the day trying to engage him in conversation.

* * *

“So, you have a sister?” Sam asks Dean the next day.

Dean takes a moment to ponder the question. “Yes. Jo.”

“Oh okay, I thought you said Charlie yesterday.”

“No, Charlie, she’s just. She’s like a sister?” Dean hesitates. “We… we didn’t grow up together?”

“I don’t remember having any childhood friends.” Sam says. “Just me and my imaginary friend.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“No, not really. I had family.”

“Yeah you said your dad wasn’t around a lot though?”

“No John was busy at work. He worked long hours.”

“He wasn’t a travelling salesman?”

“No why would you think that?”

“It’s what you said!” Dean insists.

“I wouldn’t, that would be wrong he was always just mad at my mother.” Sam hesitates. “Because… after her death? Wait, no my mother is alive. Did… Cas did my grandmother die? Is that it?”

They’ve been turning to Cas more and more, asking for him to recall what the other said at previous times because their stories keep changing and not adding up.

“I’m not sure Sam,” Cas admits. “But you said your sister's name was Charlie, Dean.”

Dean frowns, clenching his jaw. “What do you know anyway?” he grumbles.

“I’m only repeating what you said,” Cas says gently.

“I hate this, I need caffeine and a strong whiskey if I can’t even tell you my family’s names right.”

Cas nods sadly. And they continue on.

The flat wildflower fields have turned steeper and rocky, they’re almost climbing now. An upward slope that’s dotted with small clear pools of water and bubbling streams. Cas gets them to refill their water bottles, and the water is sharp, sweet, and refreshing all at once.

“I don’t think they’ll mind, if we don’t take too much that’s need for their young. Water spirits are less forgiving but not as tricky and easily slighted as the rest.”

“These things, whatever they are, have kids? We haven’t even seen an adult yet,” Sam says.

“The children are often extremely volatile, not sure of their powers yet. We won’t see one without the other, they’re always supervised by older beings until they’re grown.”

“Trouble makers huh?” Dean adds, smacking his lips at the fresh spring water and dipping his hands in too. “Gonna have their hands full.”

“Do you have kids?” Sam asks, feeling like he should know the answer.

“Yeah!” Dean exclaims. “Wait, no I mean I… I look after other people’s. But same thing right? Me and Jody, she’s my buddy in the force, there’s this one kid we were really worried about for a while when his Mom was pregnant and his dad was such a dick. Practically the spawn of Satan! He’ll be a real headache as he gets older I’m sure.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Sam says. Cas is pulling a strange face, as though he’s trying not to laugh and is also seriously worried. “The company, umm the firm I work for… I mean against, the one I go up against. Their name was Morningstar and Co, you know like the name of the devil? I always thought that was weird.”

“What did they do?” Dean asks.

Sam has to think hard and finds himself at a loss. It’s terrifying and freeing all at once, not to know, but to realise that he doesn’t. It feels like letting go, and it feels like slipping down a slope into a dark cave and he doesn’t know whether to surrender peacefully and let it happen or claw back to the top.

“The usual bullshit, I expect. Being an asshole, you know,” he says after a few moments silence.

“Well I _don’t_ know, that’s why I asked you, dummy.”

“Don’t call me names.”

“Don’t be an idiot and I won’t have to.”

“You’re the idiot!”

Dean just rolls his eyes and flips him off, stomping ahead.

“There’s no need to fight,” Cas says, struggling to keep them both close enough so that their connecting power lines aren’t stretched taut and uncomfortable.

“What would you know about it?” Dean sniffs. “It’s not like you’re the best person ever.”

“I’m not just a person, and you will show each other some respect!” Cas says, puffing out his shoulders and yanking them both around by their invisible strings to look at him.

A familiar sensation of awe creeps around the back of Sam’s mind, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s overwhelming and feels like deja vu. He’s not sure anymore if there’s a reason to discount everything Cas says. The man — angel, his mind corrects — has been nothing but helpful for days, guiding them, keeping them safe. But he wonders how the person who dragged him into the dark could possibly be worthy of respect_._

* * *

Falling asleep that night, at a high altitude from where they can look down upon a series of ever larger lakes, Sam feels content. There’s nothing on his mind except the here and now, whatever other matters are present in his life he can’t recall a single one that needs his attention at that moment. Everything that he can’t see or touch or hear seems distant and unimportant.

He has a friend. He has a guide.

Old nightmares — _a dark room, a cloth over his nose, a madman dragging him through twisting streets and strange rooms, a mundane office job that’s never enough and never complete and a life devoid of loved ones _— don’t plague him.

There’s only here, and now. And that’s enough.

* * *

They rise early the next morning and walk down a hillside that’s awash with streams and bubbling brooks of water. They pick their way between the shallow, fast flowing water until they reach the plain it all runs out on to. The early dawn light glints and shimmers, reflecting and burning through the mist wreathed lakes and pools and creating rainbows of refracted light.

The entire air before them is resplendent, glorious and bright.

Whatever Sam has seen before in his life seems grey and tired. He knows that nothing will ever live up to this sight. He feels tears pricking his eyes and glances over to see Dean looking as overawed as he feels. Cas, for the first time Sam can remember seeing, looks content. He looks peaceful.

“Very few humans will ever have seen this,” Castiel says quietly, and the words barely make it to Sam’s ears over the trill of rushing water. “And no angel I believe has ever had the privilege.”

Sam’s not sure why he thinks it, but he’s glad that if an angel were going to see it, it’s this one. He deserves it, he thinks, and then shoves the thought away as he doesn’t understand where it came from.

“Come on, we must leave,” Cas says, sighing, drawing his shoulders up higher as he becomes tense again. “I must warn you, our next destination will be very unsafe. It will appear enticing and deceptively wonderful, do not be fooled. I need you both to promise me you will do exactly what I say.”

He turns to look them both in the eye, so sincere Sam’s worry returns just a fraction.

“Alright,” he says, hesitantly. “Should we be concerned?”

“There are rules that are easy enough to follow, I hope to keep us out of harm's way, but… things have not gone entirely to plan so far.”

“Oh so there is a plan?” Dean asks, but he’s smiling. “I thought we were just haphazardly doing whatever seemed best at the time.”

“It’s a… vague plan.”

“But not vague enough to be non existent?” Sam jokes. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Where is this coming from?” Cas asks.

“What?”

“This, the banter, you haven’t been doing this. Not with me.”

Dean shrugs, “Guess we got comfortable.”

Cas looks touched and clears his throat. “On that note, let’s not delay.”

He walks with his hand outstretched for another few minutes, until he stops by the side of a bright turquoise pool. He wades in a few paces and Sam and Dean stick to the shallows, fidgeting.

Cas produces his almost half empty vial and summons the doorway with a flourish. There’s no way to get through it without getting wet.


	5. Fairy Realm

The world that greets them beyond is no less beautiful than the one they left. They find themselves in a shallow river, brilliant clean water trickling over perfect cut rocks and stones. It sounds like singing. The air is the freshest, sweetest smell Sam has ever smelt.

Probably.

He assumes.

He has to assume, because he remembers nothing. About himself. About his life. His foot hits the creek bed and the realisation of his amnesia hits him like a freight train. He pauses, halfway to gasping, to panic. He remembers the men beside him, their familiar shape and sound and presence.

He remembers the beauty of the things he just left behind.

But there are no details about himself, about his past. Only emptiness, an egg shell without the egg. He knows he’s in there, he knows he has a life, but it’s as though it’s behind a screen and he can’t see it.

“Sam?” Cas says.

Cas, who he knows. Because they’ve been together for a while. But he doesn’t remember how they met, or when. He turns and takes in the other man — Dean — who looks as lost as he feels.

“Umm, yes?”

“Are you alright? Dean, are _you _alright?” Cas asks.

“Peachy, ‘cept for this small problem with my noggin.” Dean taps himself on the side of the head. “How much did I drink last night to end up…” he looks at their surroundings with a frown, “here, with a memory like a fish?”

“Wait you don’t remember anything either?” Sam asks urgently, stumbling forward to reach Dean and… well, grab him. The solidity of him seems comforting and he wants to embrace, but Sam contents himself with standing beside him.

“Not a thing. Apart from you and angel boy over here. Kinda freaky actually.”

“You don’t sound very freaked out,” Sam says.

“Neither do you.”

“Huh, I guess… I’m not? I mean, if there was something to worry about we’d know it right?”

They both look at Cas who squares his shoulders under their dual gaze. “I promised you I’d keep you safe. I stand by that.”

“I think I remember you saying that. We were in some kind of trouble at the time?” Dean asks.

“What do you need to keep us safe from?” Sam adds, piecing together that there is some threat that’s been lost to his mind.

“Here? Almost everything,” Cas says, herding them out from the middle of the stream to the cover of the waving trees at its banks. “I need you both to listen very carefully, and do exactly as I say.”

“Who put you in charge?” Dean says.

“I did, by merit of the fact I understand what’s at stake here.”

“What’s at stake, Cas?” Sam asks.

“You, your lives, your safety. Our… my mission. I need to get you home and to do that I need you to trust me. Can you trust me?”

“Sure,” Dean says without hesitation. “I know you, more than I know myself, that has to count for something.”

Cas looks at Sam for his confirmation but he has to take a moment to think. “I… I want to. I’m just a little confused. How do we know you, I remember you saying you’re an angel. And you helped us out a few times back… um, back there?” Wherever there was.

“Yes, I am an angel, _your _angel and your friend. And right now you are caught in the midst of a work of great sorcery that stole your identities from you, and supplanted you in a place far from home. I came to retrieve you.”

“Wait wait, hold up— magic is real?” Dean says at the same time Sam squeals. “Angel as in warrior of the lord?”

“Yes, hush keep your voices down, they might be listening.”

“Who ‘they’?” Dean asks quickly, looking around.

Cas takes a deep breath, “We have landed in the realm of the fae. It is the exact middle point of any travel between realms, no matter where you begin or end it is always the centre of the universe and its inhabitants. It is not, I repeat _not, _a place you want to get caught out. So, here are my instructions.”

* * *

Cas’s rules are simple, stay close, don’t eat or drink anything they didn’t bring with them in their packs, and don’t draw attention to themselves.

They test the limits of what is deemed close enough to fall under the _don’t stray far_ rule pretty quickly. Finding with concern that they physically _can’t _go more than about ten feet apart. When they try, it feels wrong, it tugs from under Sam’s ribs in a way that feels like it emanates from deep inside his very core. It also fills his vision for a few seconds with a flash of blinding white-blue light, mixed in with copper flecks and deep-grey swirls.

Even Cas looks surprised by that. “The magic here must make our link more prominent, more… tangible. I never expected you both to see that.”

“What is it,” Dean asks, rubbing through his clothes at his breast bone.

“Magic,” Cas shrugs, but he looks sad. “A bond.”

Several minutes later he pauses, and turns to press his fingers against Sam’s temple. Sam feels clean in an instant, like everything about him from his feet to his t-shirt just went through a deep wash cycle that left everything sparkling clean. Cas does the same to Dean.

“My powers are returning more fully. I’m sorry I couldn’t do that earlier. I know… I know washing and cleanliness are important to your needs.” He looks guilty. “I forgot about packing clothes or else you could have changed before now.”

Sam and Dean both stand there, mouths agape. “Did you just… just…” Dean mutters.

“I have restorative powers. They can both heal and cleanse.”

“Alright then, anything else we should be aware of?” Sam asks.

“I could read your minds — though I wouldn’t without permission — and you can pray to me and I will hear you. If ever we get separated, call out to me and I’ll know about it.”

“Can you fly?” Dean asks, eager.

“No, not any more.”

There’s sadness in those words, weight and guilt and remorse, and it resonates with Sam as if he also hurts for this man he barely knows. His own loss, of his personhood and memories, stings at the thought. He feels like he should be grieving -- but for what he doesn’t know -- and at the same time, he feels content. If there’s a reason he should be distressed over what he doesn’t know, he can’t find it. Perhaps in ignorance there is truly bliss?

There’s nothing in his mind except the present, except what he can see and know to be real. If he can’t recall anything else, does it matter? If it does, he’s unable to find a way to care about it. How can you care about something you can’t even name?

* * *

The realm they’re in — and Sam believes Castiel that this is a _realm_, that magic is real, that they’re not on any earth he can understand — is utterly bewitching in its beauty. Every shoot of green is the deepest, most vivid colour, bark on every tree is glossy and rich. The sky, even when it’s cloud-covered, is delightful. Brightest blues, fluffiest clouds and an expanse that seems to roll out and away like a kaleidoscope further and further and more twisting and more depth until you have to look away for fear of getting dizzy. The sounds of woodland life are pleasant, every rustle of leaves a little symphony that overlaps with the next. And still there’s a blanket of quiet that permeates until talking in anything more than hushed tones feels like an interruption of the landscape.

They walk for two days keeping to hedgerows and the cover of trees, there are deeper darker forests that might cut their journey in half but Cas refuses to let them enter.

Not having memories to focus on is disconcerting, it means Sam’s brain is mostly static unless they’re having a conversation. He has knowledge of a whole plethora of things, films, music, books and history, but not knowing _how_ he knows is confusing. He tries not to think about it. Dean is stoic, but Sam sees the way his eyes are alert and flitting across their surroundings, checking that Sam is still there, that he isn’t alone. Sam reassures him with smiles and nods, trying not to look too much like he needs the same reassurances himself.

Cas is all well and good, but he clearly knows more than he’s saying, and he has his memories. There’s a connection with Dean just because they’re in the same boat here.

Picking their way through a muddy patch of coarse bracken and reedy plants, a bank of sheer rock face on one side and prickly thorn bushes on the other is when Cas yells _stop_. It’s a sound that seems to reverberate in Sam’s chest, echoing through his synapses and bringing goose flesh to his skin. There’s an intensity to it, but it isn’t anger, it’s terror.

Sam and Dean both freeze in their tracks.

“What? What?” Dean says, urgency rolling off him in waves.

“Don’t move, look, there,” Cas points and Sam follows the line of his finger to see a small mound that looks somewhat like a miniature termite mound half an inch away from Dean’s foot.

“What is that?”

“That’s a mud-pixie watchtower. It must mean there’s a colony nearby. You must step exactly where I step. They’re small but they’re vicious when provoked.”

“I thought fairies would be all sweetness and bubblegum,” Dean says, shifting his weight away from the dome of mud and windowless holes.

“What ever gave you that impression?” Cas asks, scowling. They move forward at a glacial pace, Cas checking every underbrush and walking like any movement could set off an explosion.

“Well, Disney for one thing. The Tooth Fairy for another,” Dean says.

“Wait,” Sam slaps Dean’s arm and makes him pause. “You remember that kind of thing too? Pop culture and facts and _life_ without actually knowing where you learned shit?”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t that weird? To know things but not know yourself?”

Dean shrugs, “Amnesia is a bitch whatcha gonna do about it?”

“Maybe find the cause for one thing.”

“Hush,” Cas whispers. “We can talk about this later.”

They don’t though, the rest of the day passes and it never comes up again. Sam would be annoyed except it’s too easy to relax into the rise and fall of walking and hum along with the birds and whistle of the breeze.

* * *

The water here looks so inviting that it’s difficult to ignore Cas’s advice and leave it alone, harder and harder the longer they’re here. Sam wants to wade in the rivers and float in the standing pools of water and gulp it down to see if it’s as sweet as it smells. He’s resting on a river bank, eyes closed in the mid-afternoon light when he hears a crash through the trees and Dean’s indignant _hey!_

“I told you not to eat anything! Do you have any idea what would have happened if you’d put that in your mouth?” Cas says angrily, frogmarching Dean from around the back of the nearest tree where a grove of berry bushes is just out of sight.

“I dunno, maybe a nice juicy snack?” Dean pouts, pulling his arm free.

“No, no Dean, it would mean you were bound to this place _forever_. And would never again crave human food, or be able to consume it or be sustained by it.”

“No more burgers?” Dean asks, horrified.

“Not unless the fair folk have changed their cooking traditions since I last encountered them, no.”

“Well you didn’t have to bat them out of my hand, you could’ve just said something.”

“You’re a child, and stubborn as a bull and currently not listening to reason, it seemed the appropriate response.”

“You’re mean,” Dean says, pouting further and sticking his bottom lip out, crossing his arms for comedic effect. When Cas almost cracks a smile Dean smirks, “And I’m not a child.”

“You're as naive as one, it would appear.”

“You’re very sanctimonious when you think you’re right,” Dean huffs, rolling his shoulders.

“I am right.”

“Well, maybe staying here forever would be better than being stuck with you,” Dean says flippantly.

Cas looks hurt.

“Surely nothing lasts forever though right? Doesn’t time change, well, everything, eventually?” Sam says to change the subject.

Cas frowns, and Dean scoffs. “My love of burgers is with me until the end of time.”

“But that still implies time will end. So, not forever,” Sam replies, raising his eyebrows in mock smugness. “Impermanence is the state of the universe, everything changes.”

“Some things are… will be unchangeable. Some things are unbreakable,” Cas says, looking a little frantic. Harried, even.

“Mmm, like marriage vows? Or a promise? People can always go back on their word. Like you, what’s to stop you dumping us anywhere anytime you like?”

“I wouldn’t— ” Cas says quickly.

“But you could and that’s the difference. Who’s to say any of us will stick together when the going gets tough. Maybe we’ll find out who we are and hate you for showing us, that’d be a kick in the teeth.”

“I hope you wouldn’t, I mean, I hope you won’t...”

“Free will and all that, people are free to be the biggest dicks they like,” Dean adds. He’s munching something from his pack and Cas scowls at him. “What I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry, but we have to be careful. If our supplies run out…”

“Then forever damned to be a fairy I know. Well, I choose to be damned with the devil I know — that’s you by the way — so can we get a move on?”

Cas looks like he wants to protest, and Sam isn’t sure which part of the conversation has him riled, but his shoulders slump and he leads the way again, not even looking back.

* * *

The day passes in a haze and Sam is half asleep on his feet. Every slow down, every stop, he wants to close his eyes. The world feels comforting, the grass is soft under his feet and the air is gentle on his face.

“Can we take a break? I need… I’m going to nap,” he says and slumps to the ground using his pack to cushion between his back and the nearest tree.

“Sam, please get up, I don’t think we should stop here.”

“Why not? It’s perfectly… nice. There’s nothing. Cas there’s _nothing. _Isn’t it nice not to have to do anything?”

“Someone took a sip out of the spiked punch,” Dean sniggers.

“What? What? Did he, did he drink something?” Cas asks, trying to pry Sam’s eyes open. Sam bats his hands away and groans.

“No, I just mean he’s sipping on the Kool-Aid, thinks this place is awesome.”

“I don’t think it’s awesome, I think it’s as good as anywhere else. Can’t we just stay a while? Why do we always have to _do _things.”

“Okay, alright, listen. Sam, Dean was tempted by the fruit, by the need to fill himself with this place. You’re being tempted by the restfulness, the feeling of calm, the lure to sit down and rest and never worry about human things again. It’s taking you over so I need you to fight it, like Dean did with the berries?”

“Technically speaking I didn’t fight the berries, you did it for me.” Sam hears footsteps and Dean says “Here, let me.”

And then a stinging slap knocks his face to the left and he’s startled enough to jump up, rubbing his sore cheek. “What the hell?”

“Fought those fairies for you, you’re welcome.”

And just like that they’re on the move again, though Sam still isn’t convinced of _why. _They could build a house here, or set up a tent, or bed down in the leaves and dirt and he’d be perfectly content. Why was everyone always trying to get him to carry on, to continue, to go forging ahead where there was no roadmap?

Sitting still for a while sounds awfully inviting. Fairies be damned.

* * *

Walking past a field that recedes into the distance for many miles a glint of the setting sunlight catches his eye, flashing silver and rose gold and honey yellow and spring green as he turns his head. There’s a towering city of spires that appears like a mirage in the distance, glass towers and curling turrets it seems to grow out of the very earth.

He stops, stunned, gobsmacked and in awe. “What is that?”

“The Dusk city,” Cas hums, captivated too. “It only exists outside of its own self at the setting of the sun, it’s the only time you can enter or leave. It’s a cornerstone of the fairy kingdom, a very important place. I imagine it’s fortuitous that we’re passing now, when there’s no time for a travelling fae to coerce — or force — us inside. It’s hard to leave once you’re there, so I have heard. They guard prisoners especially during twilight hours, of course.”

“Mmm, pretty fantastical sight though,” Dean adds. “Who knew fairies have style?”

“Pretty much everyone, actually. Most human fashion designers have been influenced by fae, though not all of them know it.”

“For real?” Dean asks, turning away from the sight to look at Castiel.

“Yes, in the same way most great sculptors and artists have been influenced by the muses. Though they are usually more subtle than their fae counterparts.”

“Huh, weird. Who knew magic was amongst us the whole time?”

“Nothing can be as magical as this though,” Sam says. He can’t draw his eyes away from the tower and he doesn’t want to. And he’s still sure staying here really might not be so bad.

Later, when they’re moving on again Dean suddenly stops in his tracks. “Wait, who knew fairies have _prisoners?”_

Cas hurries them along, and doesn’t answer.

* * *

The next day is a long slow slog, they turn in circles and get lost amongst the trees, deep in the woods. Twice they come across a grove of trees so large they can’t see the top of, trunks so enormous that it would take at least a quarter of an hour to walk the circumference of just one of them. They grow larger in size the further into the distance they look.

Cas drags them away, muttering curses and getting agitated. When Sam asks what’s wrong he says they need to head in that direction, but he refuses to take them through the grove. There are fairy abodes in there, he insists, living inside trees so large they contain entire clans. Fierce and proud folk who don’t take kindly to trespassers.

It seems like a waste of time to Sam, trying to circumnavigate a place when he has no idea where they’re going anyway.

Finally, around what must be noon if the twin suns high in the sky are anything to go by, Cas throws up his hands and declares he needs to find an alternate route.

“Alright, lead the way then,” Dean says, stretching and sitting down.

“Can’t we just go through the damn forest?” Sam asks again, tiredness making him grouchy.

“I’ve told you, no, perhaps I should go on ahead and come back when I’ve found a path for us…” Cas says, hesitantly. Squinting in the distance.

“Fine by me, what’s the worst that can happen?” Dean replies.

Sam thinks that’s a very bad thing to say, but he doesn’t voice the thought.

Cas does something strange with his chest, something that feels like suction and pressure and then silvery pale light emanates from his body in a glowing undulating thread. Cas does the same to Dean, detaches the strands from his own being, and then digs both tendrils into the dirt. Sam and Dean watch this with awe, and a small feeling of trepidation lingers in Sam’s mind.

“What does it do?” he asks in reverence.

“It keeps us joined, so we can’t get separated,” Cas explains.

“And what will it do here?”

“Well, it’s still connected to me, I’ve just lengthened my range, but this will prevent you from getting lost. Or pulled away. And I’ll feel it if any other entity tries to meddle with it.”

“So it’s a baby monitor and reigns combo. Nice work angel, got us on a very tight leash.”

Cas looks aghast until Dean says “I’m joking, I’m joking, go find us a back door or whatever,” and blows him a kiss and a wave. Cas wanders away, throwing glances back at them until he’s out of sight.

They sit for a while, and then Sam dozes, and Dean hums rock songs. He’s a terrible singer but Sam doesn’t mind. The forest around them goes very still, and very quiet. Without communicating they’re both up and on their feet, scanning the tree line for movement. They move as far as the tether allows in opposite directions, keeping the other at their back. Nothing happens for several agonising long moments and then the wood explodes into colour and life and chaos all at once.

People — though not people, too tall too extreme, too magnificent — crowd from all sides, half a dozen on foot and several more on horseback. Only, not horses, giant elk and deer, and one moose and something with two heads and eight pairs of eyes.

Sam stumbles back until he collides with Dean who has also retreated and they grab for sticks and rocks to defend themselves. The folk surround them, closing off all routes away until they’re hemmed in a circle. The animals are placid, but their nostrils flare and they watch with beady eyes. It’s the beings on them that scream _danger_ and _authority _and _scrutiny_ though, calculating and removed as though they’re looking at bugs under a microscope.

“What have we here?” says the most forefront fae, standing in his saddle to peer down at them.

“Humans, who seem to have strayed,” says what must be a foot soldier, stepping marginally closer. They have a shield on one arm and a spear held loosely in the opposite hand.

“Mmm, not what I expected to find on our hunt this day, but fortune favours the frivolous. Perhaps we shall corral them and take them back as a prize. They could fetch quite a pretty price. The Dusk City has been lacking in sport of late.” The City, those spires, that gleaming beautiful expanse, that place that no one human leaves once they enter. Something cold and hard grows in Sam’s gut at the thought of being dragged there, for _sport_, for _entertainment._

“Not for sale,” Dean growls.

“Now might be a good time to _shut up_,” Sam hisses. The last thing they need is to antagonise their opponents.

“Oh, they speak, what have you to say?” asks another mounted fae, urging his steed forward. “Perhaps a plea for safety? Or a bargain?”

“No deals!” Sam says, too quick for their liking if the rustle of indignation is anything to go by.

“If you won’t negotiate how do you expect to get what you want? Or even make it past my men alive?”

“You don’t have anything we want,” Dean says, and Sam feels the way he straightens his back and lifts his chin. “You want anything from us, then you’ll have to take it.”

“Very well, then.”

With a flick of their wrist the leader sets his party on them. They drag Sam and Dean apart, their larger size quick to subdue any attempts to fight them off. They pick them up like children, legs kicking, arms flailing and try to throw them over their steeds.

Only they can’t. Sam feels the tug in his chest almost painfully as they try a second time to fling him up and he grunts, the light flaring before his eyes as the tendril connecting him to Dean, and them both to the ground, goes taut and will not snap.

They’re placed back on their feet and manhandled around, hands and fingers pressing into the clothes and lifting their chins and even rubbing through their hair while the fae attempt to find the source of the sorcery, of the annoyance preventing the capture of their prey.

That’s how Cas finds them, he comes running into the clearing, brandishing a blade of silver that gleams even in the low light under the canopy.

“These humans are under my protection!”

The leader jumps from his elk, landing with a thud that rattles Sam’s bones, and strides to Castiel. He towers over the angel, his chest level with Cas’s head, his hand gripped firmly on his sword hilt.

“You have no power of authority here, angel.”

“Over these men, I do. I have claimed them, they are mine.”

“Not like angels to take pets,” someone loitering behind Sam sneers.

“Perhaps we can make a trade, if you are trapped in this realm we have the means to offer you a way out. Your filth isn’t welcome on fae soil, seraph. Take your leave as it is offered to you.”

“Again, buddy, not for sale,” Dean shouts past the hand gripping his throat and shoulder.

“There’s always something,” the leader muses. “Some incentive. Perhaps we only need to probe a little further and we will find yours.”

“I will not allow this to continue,” Cas says, his eyes glowing blue. “You will let us leave.”

“Oh so the magic is yours, that’s clever, very clever. Do they have any idea what you’ve done?” says the rider on the deer.

“It is not your concern!”

Sam thinks it might be though, that there’s something worth knowing about himself and their situation that he hadn’t thought to question. Mostly though, he just wants out, wants away. His life feels like it’s being weighed and measured, and he puffs his chest out in pride. No one will own him except himself, thank you very much.

“You’re on my land, in my path, it is very much of interest.”

The leader steps closer still, leaning down to intimidate Cas. Cas moves like a striking snake, pressing a palm up to the forehead of the fae, fingertips brushing the top of his auburn head. He falls with the thump of a giant, sprawling across the ground. His cohorts screech and Sam covers his ears.

Cas doesn’t pause for a second, scrawling something on the forest floor that sends every fae in the vicinity blasted backwards. They land and roll and some get up dazed and some don’t get up at all.

Sam feels the connection yanking him forward as he looks around bewildered at the scene, turning to see Cas dragging the power lines up from the earth and back into himself.

And then they run, and they don’t look back.

* * *

They don’t stop for the rest of the day, running as light footed as they can, alternating with brisk walking. Not stopping, not resting. There’s no extra breath for talking, and though he has questions he doesn’t think he’ll like the answers to any of them, so perhaps it’s better if they stay unspoken.

One thing is clear, they aren’t safe here.

Sam sees what he couldn’t see before, the menace behind every hidden grove. The malice in the lilting song that seeks to lull him into sleep or a daze. Every dark corner of the place looks like a waiting maw, ready to snap him up.

The air grows cold and frost forms on the leaves and buds around them. His breath fogs into crystals. The sun sets in a haze of red that never really leaves the sky, even once the stars appear.

He thinks he sees eyes in the dark, slow blinking and wide and glassy, watching their progress. Every time he whips his head in the other direction, what’s behind him feels like it’s ready to pounce, only once he looks there’s nothing there.

Dean is similarity alert, they communicate without speaking but Sam can see the lines of tension in him. Cas is frantic, urging them forward, letting them eat as much as they need to keep up their energy so long as they _keep moving_.

Sam doesn’t have any objections. The close call has turned him against the place, soured instantly, the moment they looked ready to be lured and taken against their will.

After very little restless sleep the dawn breaks weakly over the horizon. The air seems thick, harder to breath, harder to move through.

“It’s fighting back, it wants to keep you,” Cas says when they ask. “You were seen, you got away, every entity here now has an interest in hunting you.”

“Even the… nature?” Dean huffs.

“I don’t think anything here is truly benevolent, and everything has a sense of sentience. Right Cas?”

“Right, even the trees have eyes.”

Sam can feel them, and he shudders.

Dean grabs for a thick stick with a forked branches at the end, and picks out the sharpest stone he can find. He rips a strap from his bag and binds the stone to the stick with what seems like practiced ease.

“Just in case,” he says with a shrug. There isn’t breath or space or time to say much else. Sam hopes it won’t come to a fight, they’re hopelessly outnumbered, outmanned, and Dean’s new weapon, Castiel’s shining blade, and his own fists, don’t stand much chance against a small army.

The chase is truly on, they hear horns blaring and the change in the wind brings scents of beasts and beings. The pace they set matches the pounding of his heart, every thud matched with a footfall and another step closer to safety.

He hopes it’s safety. God he hopes. His limited experience — what he remembers of his life — has only been here, and now, and he sees the fraught nature of it and wants nothing more to do with it. Whatever else there is in his life he’s ready to find out.

He doesn’t wait much longer to have it revealed, Cas picks up speed and they run full pelt along a river edge and further past a rushing waterfall into a cave in the rock face behind.

The powder Cas scatters lands on the rock face directly, carving a door into the essence of the stone. None of them stop the think, tumbling through to the other side as an arrow strikes the earth at their feet as they jump.


	6. Underworld

For several heart stopping seconds he thinks the doorway hasn’t worked, they’re still where they were, only deeper inside a cave. The floor beneath his shoes still feels like stone, and bringing his hand up in the gloom he comes up against solid rock. He blinks, turning in anticipation of being overrun by fae, when his eyes begin to adjust. There is no doorway or open rockface behind him, they’re all standing and blinking in a narrow corridor or stone. Greyish brown rock, like an underground chasm.

There’s enough light to see by, a vaguely red glow that permeates everywhere and everything at the same frequency but somehow throwing deep cast shadows at every overhang of rock, and under their feet. There’s no obvious source of the light, and no obvious way to go. Left or right? Forward or back? It all looks the same.

“So where are we now? I can’t say I find this all that welcoming,” Dean says, gesturing around.

Sam, for his part, keeps silent, there’s a sense of foreboding that feels like prickles along the back of his neck. Whatever is in this place it feels evil, and not the mischievous chaotic, mind twisting possibility of menace from the fae, but something that seeps into the soul and feels black. He wouldn’t be surprised to look down and find himself standing in tar, or surrounded by eerie fog; but there’s nothing. Nothing but the same blank surfaces of rock, seeming endless, stretching away in every direction.

Cas looks troubled, unsure, and that in itself worries Sam. He’s their only constant, their guide, beside him they know nothing and the dread of his amnesia fills him all at once until it almost overflows. He wants to yell, to grab Cas by the lapels and demand answers, to make him pay for… for whatever it is that got them in this mess. But he stops himself with a breath, holding in his anger, turning his fear into a blade that he can sharpen until there’s something to point it at.

“Cas?” he prompts gently, but firmly.

Cas walks in a small circle, sniffing the air and holding out his palm, the action is familiar as though he’s seen Cas do this before only he can’t recall it. It makes him sad, bereft, there’s no point of reference for anything in his mind but snatches of resemblance and a sense of deja vu.

“I think, I think we may be in the underworld. I had hoped to avoid this,” Cas says tightly.

“The underworld.” Dean deadpans. “Like hell? Where’s the fire and brimstone? Where’s the tortured souls? Do we get to watch Mussolini burn at the stake or something?”

“Not hell, no, if I’d meant hell I would have said hell. The underworld, the _world under_. It’s not a place humans are meant to come,” he looks at them in a moment of bare concern, nostrils flaring, fists clenching, and then calms himself. Sam notes it all with detached air, like he saw this coming, like he’s sure of how Cas will react before he does it.

He wonders for a moment if he’s psychic, but pushes the thought aside. Making guesses and assumptions about himself seems like something to do when they’re not in peril — and he’s sure they’re in peril.

“So you lead us into danger?” he says icily.

“Not intentionally, but I’m afraid it appears that way. We should get moving.” He walks off at a brisk pace, and Dean shrugs and plods along behind.

Sam stands there, clenching his jaw until the insistent tug behind his rib cage drags him forward.

He strides to catch them and pulls Dean back a step, and hisses “This doesn’t bother you?”

“What?” Dean whispers back.

“This! That he’s led us god knows where and we can’t do a thing about it?”

“I don’t know much, Sam, but Cas is all we’ve got, I’ve decided I might as well trust him.”

“Well I don’t trust this place! Can’t you feel it? It’s… evil.”

“It is indeed Sam, I commend you for noticing. Though I can promise you that though God does know about this place, he just doesn’t like to visit.” Cas turns as he says it and Sam is shocked to see there’s not a hint of irony or jest in the statement. The mystery and vast unknowability of their situation is maddening. “I’m sorry to put you through this, like I am about everything else, but if we move quickly, we may be able to avoid the worst of it.”

He picks up the pace, walking assuredly off into the gloom. They follow, and the monotony of walking, of the rock face and tunnels, sets Sam’s fears into a hollow background noise. The tunnels twist and turn at intervals, coming up to crossroads and intersections and Cas pauses at each one, searching for something that Sam can’t comprehend. There’s no changes, no surprises, and without something to focus on he goes a little blank — willingly lets his mind empty so not to dwell on the unknown chasm inside him. They stop for some food, all trying to ignore the rapidly diminishing supplies, and Dean demands at least a few minutes dozing.

Cas agrees, standing watch over them, and Sam marvels again at Cas’s ability to go without sleep.

He wakes with a start some time later, shivering, and thrashes upwards until he’s fully awake and standing, hand braced on the wall. He’s panting furiously, the cold feels like a knife — or fingernails — against his skin and he rubs his arms to try and make the sensation go away.

“Sam?” Cas says, voice troubled and low. He reaches for Sam’s arm to steady him. Sam pulls away, backing up against the rock wall. “What is it?”

“It’s cold, I don’t… I don’t like it.”

“That’s… understandable.”

“No I mean, I — I’m scared. Why am I scared?”

“This place, it’s not hell, but it has a close connection. It’s not a good place for either of you, not really, but it can’t be helped now. I imagine your mind noting some resemblance, noticing some similarities — the energy of the place is not unsimilar to the pit — and buried reactions are surfacing.”

“What?” Sam hisses, because none of that makes sense. He’s shivering uncontrollably, and his insides feel like liquid, all sloshing and nervous and squeezing upwards into his throat.

“No human could come here and be unaffected, but you have more reasons to react this way. Your past is deeply connected to hell, and this is like its next door neighbour.”

“Are you saying I’ve been to hell? That’s… that’s insane!”

“Is it? After everything else you’ve seen you think that’s out of the question?”

“How could I forget something like that? How can we just not know anything about ourselves?”

“He’s got a point Cas,” Dean joins in, Sam starts to see him awake. “Memories don’t just disappear for no reason, and the bad ones… tend to stick with you.”

Cas considers him for a moment. “Are you speaking from experience?” he asks slyly.

“What?”

“Well it seems to me that though your memories may be inaccessible at present, the impression left by your experiences remains.”

Sam frowns, finding it hard to follow the conversation as it feels like dark shadows are pressing down on all sides, as though the cold has hands and could grab and hurt him at any moment.

“So you’re saying I’ve been through terrible things too? That’s comforting. Least you’re not alone Sam, huh?”

Sam takes a long look at Dean, trying to gauge if he meant it seriously or not. He supposes it does make him feel a little better, not being the only one with serious emotional baggage.

“Can’t you tell us anything?” he asks, beseeching, looking to Cas with desperation.

“Anything I did, I don’t think you would believe. If you have questions though, questions that come from any snippets of things you can recall I will happily answer. As long as we keep moving.”

They fall into step behind him without thinking, and walk in silence for what Sam guesses is half a mile. The longer they walk, the more the cold seeps into his pores, and his senses become increasingly alert.

“If we’re near hell, shouldn’t it be hot?” he asks finally.

Cas looks sideways at him, sad around the eyes. “Hell is neither hot nor cold, specifically, it’s more of a prison. Though fire can be used to torment the souls there. And this place… technically it doesn’t look the way you’re perceiving it either, this is only the bare essentials of what your minds can process. Everything is much more… metaphysical than this.”

There isn’t much to say to that, there are walls, there’s rock, a floor, a ceiling. Sam can see it, trying to comprehend that there’s more just feels like asking for a headache.

“You’re cold?” Dean asks, curious, several minutes later after each of them has been lost in their own thoughts.

“You’re not?” Sam wonders aloud, he feels as though he might shatter apart under the shaking that feels bone deep.

“Not particularly. Here.” Dean shrugs off his jacket and hands it over. Sam does take it, but it doesn’t help. He holds it closer around him, pulling it over his shoulders, hunching down to brace against the icy temperature.

The dark cloud fluttering at the back of his mind takes form in an instant that he catches movement out of the corner of his eye and he launches himself to the ground with a shout, covering his head and curling into a ball. _No._

_Lucifer._

The thought startles him, making no sense, but he knows it to be true.

He realises Dean and Cas are talking to him, but their words are lost amongst a strange lilting set of words flowing in a language he doesn’t fully understand, but that seem right under the circumstances.

He realises at the same moment that the words are coming from his own lips, and that he can’t make them stop.

“What’s he saying?” Dean asks, urgent, worried.

“He’s saying sorry, and please, and… begging,” Cas replies. “Sam!”

His name is said in the same strange intonation as the language falling from his lips and he can’t ignore it, he looks up, biting his tongue and trying to force down his fear.

“You’re safe, he’s not here.”

He blinks, and asks, “Lucifer?”

Cas nods and Dean backs up an inch with surprise, no, with horror.

“That's heavy,” Dean says, tugging on his collar, but he doesn't question the validity of what Sam is experiencing.

Sam's own shock is a tiny bit smaller, seeing that they both believe him without question. Cas looks bright, and warm, and _sure._

“How? Who, why me?” It’s a garbled nonsense sentence but Cas seems to take his meaning.

“You were singled out, by the circumstances of your birth, through no fault of your own. But he cannot hurt you here.”

“You saved me,” he says, sure of it.

“I removed you from the cage, though not in time, so I wouldn’t call that saving. I couldn’t prevent the harm that was already done, but yes, it got you home — in the end.”

“What the fuck?” Dean asks. “Him — he, Lucifer? The devil? I know you said we were _different _but biblical level different is a whole ‘nother ball game.”

“It’s not that strange once you’re used to it.” is all Cas says, though Sam is half convinced he wants to spill all the secrets then and there.

“So what you said about angels and... and god, that’s really true too?” Dean asks.

“Yes. But before you ask, we do not have halos or harps.”

“What about cherubs, are they real?”

Once he’s back on his feet the journey resumes, and Sam feels lighter and less paranoid. Dean badgers Cas with question after question, half of which are barely concealed jokes and mocking jibes. It makes Sam smile, and the warmth of it finally brushes away the last of his shivering.

“I’m not cold,” he interrupts.

“Good,” Cas smiles at him, and offers him a water bottle. “You faced the memory, instead of fighting it, the reaction is over.”

“You’re good with us anyway Sam,” Dean says. “We wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” he punches Sam on the shoulder and they continue walking, it’s only then he realises Dean’s jokes and banter were probably all to provide a distraction. He picks up his pace to make sure he walks side by side with Dean.

Cas guides them with only occasional pauses to check direction, but pulls them into alcoves with increasing frequency to hide from whatever is down here. There are screeches and woops, scraping eardrum splitting sounds like claws on stone.

“What is that?” Dean asks, after one particularly loud near-encounter.

“Demons.”

“Demons?!” Sam whisper yells.

“This is their thoroughfare, they can teleport, but the tunnels act as a conduit to get them to the place they want to go.”

“Wait, this place is a demon delivery system?” Dean says, face twisting up into a grimace.

“That isn’t wholly accurate, but more or less, among other things.”

They don’t see one for what must be half a day, but now he knows what to listen for the sounds as they crouch hidden do sound like something moving past at high speeds, occasionally accompanied by human-like wails or excited shouting. And sometimes the sense of foreboding that goes along with the presence of the noise is overwhelming, not like the pressing insistence of his earlier memory recall, but a deep note of metallic sulphur and hatred that permeates the air.

Every time it happens Dean tenses more and more tightly, Sam sees the way the lines of stress don’t leave him as quickly or as completely. When he asks about it Dean shrugs him off and turns stoically silent. But the agitation grows, noticeable in the way Dean urges them to move faster, in his short temper.

When they do find themselves unavoidably in the path of two demons, it happens in a rush, oncoming traffic from two sides. Both demons charge around blind corners while the three of them are caught in a straight walkway between them. Cas pulls them to the side as dark swirling masses pass them, but then they turn simultaneously and reform into swaggering human figures.

Dean curses quietly, standing from his crouch, already in a fighting stance.

“Well well, what do we have here, humans for the taking?”

“Looks that way, what are you doing here, this is no place to be hanging out.”

“We should tell the boss.”

“Or maybe we should have some fun first, see if they know anything.”

The demons move forward as one, coming from both sides, and Dean takes point, with the nearer. He moves to tackle it, spinning around and pushing it from behind until it loses balance and then neatly steps aside to avoid the swinging blow it counters with.

Sam watches as Cas defends from the other side, but turns back to see Dean slam the demons head against a wall, kick it’s knees apart and dislocate a shoulder. The demon screams, and it is full of rage as its body neatly knits back together. Dean’s face is blank and focused, he takes one step toward Sam but it’s only so he can have space to pull his makeshift weapon — the large stick and strapped on rock — from his pack. He brings it down with swift movements, a strike to the face and several to the body, not even pausing.

Sam’s concentration is pulled away as Cas shouts his name. He turns to find Cas parrying the demon towards him. Without thinking he grabs its arms and Cas plunges his blade into its chest.

As it falls to the ground Dean is there already wrenching the blade from where it’s buried and throwing it at the retreating back of the now fleeing form of the other demon. The blade lands with a thwack, dead centre, and it slumps to the tunnel floor. Dean isn’t even winded, but he’s grim and splattered with blood.

He picks up his pack and stalks away in the direction they were headed.

Sam rushes to catch up, and Cas trails behind, after retrieving his blade.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean asks with a bark.

“Which thing Dean?” Cas replies with a sigh.

“That I'm a killer.”

“You’re a Hunter.”

“Same difference. But that’s not all, is it?” He turns on his heel to stare Cas down, pointing a finger at Cas’s chest, “I’ve been like one of them, dark like them, I felt it in the way I attacked. I’ve torn people apart, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“Wait, so you fight the bad guys, why is that bad?” Sam asks.

“Because I don’t think that’s all it was, is it Cas? I know how to cut, how to cause pain. I tortured. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Sam watches the way Dean is all clenched fists and leaning forward, body coiled taut. Dean is desperate for Cas to tell him it’s not true, that much is written on his face.

“You did, you were tortured until you couldn’t stand it, and you took up the knife yourself.” Cas says, eyes downcast. “It’s not something to be ashamed of, no other man could’ve—”

“But I liked it, and I was good at it, and that’s shameful enough.”

Dean rearranges his pack and strides away and Sam blinks, looking to Cas for some sort of guide in how to proceed. Cas grimaces and waves him forward.

They’re all so tangled up in each other, dependant and bonded, that Sam doesn’t question why following is a good idea — he just knows it is.

Several hours later, after a brief stop to rehydrate and rest their legs, they pass a hole in the floor which seems to be bottomless, deep black and echoing. They skirt around the edges but strange garbled screams float upwards. Sam flinches, grimacing at the prospect of what it means.

“You said this place is hell’s neighbour… but did you mean its upstairs neighbour?” he asks.

“Yes, in a way, though these things have very little relativity in actual space. They overlap in certain physical dimensions though and the underworld is above hell in almost all of them.”

Dean peers once more over the pit, and Sam sees fear laid bare on his face before he pulls back with a shrug. “Always knew hell was an apartment complex.” He flashes Sam a smile as he says it and Sam can’t help smiling back, shaking his head.

Dean pauses several steps later though, “You said something about no other man going through what I did… through hell, but my dad?” He turns around to see the answer to the question.

Cas nods, eyes wide, waiting for Dean to say more. Dean stares him down, face scrunched in thought, searching for some memory or other. “My dad went to hell for me.”

Sam flinches in surprise at the statement as Cas says “Yes.”

“And then, and then I did the same for…” Dean looks at Sam, then, “for you?”

“Me?”

“I think, Cas? I remember Sammy, holding on for Sammy. That has to be you.”

The nickname in relation to something so monumental jars Sam into a spiral of half snatched images and sensations. Pride, terror, determination, hope, pain loss guilt, duty and protection. Saving someone, preventing worldwide catastrophe, on the strength of one bond.

He sees almost everything he feels reflected back at him. _Brother_. _**Love.**_

“You’re my… you’re Sammy.” It’s not a question.

“We’re related?” Sam asks, turning to Cas for confirmation.

Cas beams, arms half raised as though he wants to embrace them.

“You didn’t tell us that?” Dean barks, but he’s almost laughing.

“I needed you to remember, if I told you you would know it, but you wouldn’t necessarily… _know_ it.”

“I have a brother,” Sam breathes out.

“An older brother,” Dean says with pride, slapping him square on the chest. “Come along, squirt.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, I’m clearly the one in charge.”

They walk on, barely noticing the worrying lightness of their packs and the soreness of their feet. There’s far too much else to think about.


	7. Mirrorscape

It’s not long after that that Cas finds a place he deems a worthy spot — by whatever metric he uses — to make another cut into the unknown. They all step through without questioning it and Sam has only a slight trepidation about what they might face on the other side. He’s almost resigned to it now, only glumly wondering what else there might be to life besides this.

What meets them beyond the black though is startling, so bright, so_ big_. The place is entirely glass, silver and glinting white in places, with small iridescent rainbows catching in the light. There’s no clue where the source of the light comes from, it seems to be all around them, the same strength and intensity from every direction. The reflective surfaces recede into the distance in every direction, sideways as well as up, the space looking at least as tall as a cathedral. Only the floor is not made of metal, a smooth white expanse of what looks like marble.

Sam stops in his tracks, as does Dean, only Cas striding on as though this is normal.

“Cas?” Dean calls out. Cas looks back with a frown.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Care to explain…?” Sam says, indicating their surroundings with a swipe of his hand.

“We’re in the realm of mirrors. Don’t fear, this is exactly where I expected we would turn up.”

“For once,” Dean mutters. Cas ignores him.

“Walk carefully though, follow closely, there’s a lot to get lost in here.”

Still looking around in awe they draw up behind Cas and follow his footsteps. It is a maze of glass and reflections, every turn offers seemingly countless avenues they could walk down. There are no markers, no horizon to aim for, no stars or sun to navigate by.

It feels almost holy, reverent. The tread of their shoes sounds too loud to Sam’s ears, their disturbance somehow wrong.

He peers closer as they pass one of the shining suspended objects and without warning, he’s seeing double. There’s the room they’re in, and there’s a room in the mirror — somehow more real and full of colour and he stops, swaying in place as he watches a scene unfold. It looks like fighting, two familiar figures railing on each other full force while the room around them gets destroyed in their wake. They shout at each other and he strains forward to try and hear what’s being said, until there’s a hand on his shoulder. He blinks up into Cas’s blue eyes, startled, feeling a bit like he was caught watching some dirty secret.

“Careful, don’t get pulled in. You can see all manner of things here. You won’t like all of them, but they will draw your attention until you might whither away watching things unfold.”

“Is that happening right now?” he asks, gesturing to the mirror, but when he looks back it’s blank and his own reflection stares back at him.

“No, and yes. To your mind it will be fresh, new, but the moment has long since passed.”

“That was me?” Thinking about it he realises the figures did look familiar, and the fight too, he could almost remember the cracking of the skin of his knuckles and blows striking his face. The anger and desperation swirling in his gut. He wants to know how it ended, wants to know the outcome.

He turns back and taps the glass, hoping the movie-like scene will reappear. Cas catches his hand before he can make contact, and he frowns, opening his mouth to protest.

“Hey, this one is us!” Dean shouts, beckoning from six feet away. Sam hurries up behind him to look over his shoulder and watches in mounting anxiety as a younger Dean in the mirror barges into a room with a shotgun clutched in unsteady hands, and has terror plastered on his face. There’s a flash of a man — a man who looks like someone he knows — tearing some kind of monster away from a child. The tiny sleeping child Sam knows, suddenly, is him. The view seems to be from higher up, from beside the bed, some reflective surface of the room like a window, letting them see in.

The man checks on his sleeping childlike form, and turns angrily on Dean, clutching Sam to his chest and stroking his hair while Dean seems to shrink, curling in on himself in shame.

“These are memories!” he exclaims. The first one he saw is now visible in his mind's eye, from his own perspective as though he didn’t just watch it, he lived it. Fighting with Dean in some swanky hotel room, smashing their surroundings to pieces while he’s filled with righteous anger and the frustration of being misunderstood. He shivers. The second scene slips into place in his mind too, and he gulps, looking around.

This place could reveal everything they need to know. The urge to stand and watch is overpowering, to peer into his own life and regain his memories without having to wait, or having to try.

Dean, beside him, nods, looking solemn. He places a hand on Sam’s shoulder, gripping tightly, before he turns away and shifts his pack higher up on his own shoulders. Always taking the burden, Sam thinks.

He turns and finds a third mirror displaying a young woman, brushing her hair and laughing. She’s blonde,slim and carefree. He sees himself step up behind her and embrace her. He doesn’t know who she is but he remembers the moment and it makes him sad, painfully so.

He staggers away, pulling Dean with him. “I don’t think we should watch.”

Dean drags his feet, looking backwards at whatever he was watching before Sam grabbed him. Sam feels hunger growling in his stomach and a heavy weight of tiredness in his legs. Cas is rooted in place and staring into his own mirror and Sam panics, wondering if they’ve all been standing around lost in their pasts for longer than it seems.

The place seems overlarge, imposing, and threatening now. Echoing on for untold miles while it tries to snare them into secrets and snatches of hidden lives. The things he doesn’t know feel too big for him, like they’re too much to contain within one person. The pieces of information he’s gathered fit together like an unfinished puzzle, a paint by numbers that isn’t filled in. And he could get answers here, but he doesn’t want them, not like this.

Not in such a violently invasive way, not when his skin crawls, feeling like he’s spying. And not when they only make the things he doesn’t understand more stark, more worrisome.

He drags them all away, a hand fisted in Dean and Cas’s collars until they get moving with some speed. Cas takes over, guiding them, and they only let themselves glance fleetingly into mirrors as they pass.

“What is this, what are we seeing?” he asks, though he thinks he knows the answer.

“Events, anything that occurred in sight of a mirror,” Cas says quietly. “It used to be a travel dimension, between mirrored surfaces, and then malicious parties used the portal rifts to spy and infiltrate, and most good entities abandoned the practice.”

Like Alice in Wonderland, or Snow White, Sam thinks fleetingly, portals or avenues for communication.

“Now it’s more like an archive, a lonely outpost, a place that wants to trap you.”

“So we don’t look,” he says.

“Not for too long,” Cas agrees.

“That’s really not a problem,” Dean says, barrelling ahead.

The walk is swift as they all try to look out and above or down at their feet. Even so, he catches sight of things and can’t always pull his gaze away.

He sees himself with blood dripping down his chin. He sees Dean looking at him disapprovingly from over his shoulder. He catches sight of Cas standing over him while he is bound to a chair looking beat to hell. He watches Dean slice the heads of creatures to save huddled people from a lethal bite. He notices consoling looks given to faces he recalls but can’t name and remembers talking to loved ones of victims of nameless, senseless violence, trying to console them, knowing it’s futile.

He experiences the onslaught of memory of sickness burning black, spiderwebbing through his veins as he peers at himself, close up and exhausted, leaning in towards a mirror and burning away some magic that was eating him alive.

He sees a younger version of himself chained underneath a bathroom sink, shaking and twisting in distress. His mind tells him it’s from withdrawals, and his heart grows heavier, knowing it’s true.

Then he notices he and Dean in the comfortable clothes of patients in a hospital, in a darkened hallway, as two people drag Sam kicking and screaming past an immobilised Dean who stares up at his point of contact to the scene. Something flickers behind Dean, and Sam remembers the evil, the way they were trapped indoors with it until Dean managed to kill it.

Dark, scary, painful things. And each one slots into his mind with no context, and no recollection before or after. He only knows it’s him, and they are true, and he can’t shake them away, they stick, filling in some blanks but only creating more questions.

“Cas, why is nothing in these reflections good? Is there nothing cheerful in our lives?” he asks.

Cas looks at him sadly, “Plenty, but this place shows your most honest selves, your true reflections. That means some bad things, sometimes.”

“Hey, this one ain’t so bad,” Dean says grabbing his elbow. He looks and sees a powerful, fond embrace between the two of them, remembering the desperate soul crushing relief of the moment; Dean alive, when he shouldn’t be.

The real Dean, the _now_ Dean, shoots him a smile. There are more hugs after that, more snippets of laughter in a sleek black car, more shared eye rolls as a large towering, unclear figure leads them out of motel room after motel room. Cas healing them both, relief on his face. Cas appearing out of the blue, startling them both until Sam smiles and Dean scowls, even as his eyes look pleased. Despite not hearing the words spoken it’s easy to understand what’s happening. Camaraderie. Trust. Friendship.

He walks close to Dean and they point out the best ones to each other, valiantly refusing to acknowledge all the bad.

* * *

It’s hard to tell how long they’ve walked for, or how far they’ve gone, as everything looks the same. Cas stops periodically, holding his palm up into empty air and choosing what direction they should march based on whatever it is that he senses.

There’s no telling what time of day it is, or whether they should be needing, but it becomes obvious that they must stop when he and Dean are both stumbling over their feet in exhaustion.

“Can’t we just take a break, whenever we get to the next place?” Dean asks, suppressing a yawn, “It's too bright to sleep here.”

“There’s only one realm that we could pass through, between here and home. It’s not a place it would be safe to stay in for very long,” Cas answers.

And _that _gets Sam’s attention. “You mean we’re almost… wherever home is?”

“Home is earth numbnuts,” Dean says, adding an elbow to his jibe, nudging Sam. He slaps Dean’s arm away and looks at Cas, waiting for confirmation.

“Almost,” Cas says heavily.

“And then we’ll remember?”

“Yes.”

It buoys his spirits, even more than the numerous good snippets of memories he has of them all together. It makes carrying on seem worth it, if they’re almost done. Sleep comes easier, knowing it might be the last time he has to sleep on a cold hard floor with a backpack for a pillow.

It’s probably the shortest amount of time they have spent anywhere, it’s almost jarring to leave surroundings so quickly once they wake, but Cas is sure he’s found the right spot to move on, not far from where they slumbered.

Once they’re there, Dean grabs Cas’s coat and spins him gently round, before he can start the ritual.

“So, where are we going next? I think a little heads up might be nice.”

Cas scrutinises them both and Sam jumps in, “Look, we trust you, we might not know all the details now but we remember enough to know you’re on our side, it’s why we’re asking. Fill us in and we’ll believe you.”

Relief passes across Cas’s face followed by dismay. Sam ducks down to look in his eyes when Cas drops his gaze to the ground but he shakes himself and looks up again.

“The veil.”

“Which is?” Dean asks.

“The last stop between the nether realms and earth. Some call it the ghostly plane, or the astral plane. It’s a place that can hold spirits, a barricade that stops the supernatural from crossing into the physical — most of the time anyway.”

“It sounds familiar,” Sam says, recollection tickling the back of his memories.

“You’ve had dealings with it many times.”

“Are we gonna find trouble there?” Dean asks and Sam understands why, they’ve killed a lot, that much is evident even from the small amount he has pieced together. And maybe they were all — or most of them — bad, but they were also all human once. If they come across anyone or anything that bears them ill… he’d rather be prepared.

“I doubt it, at least not more than anyone else entering the veil. Most angry spirits are tied to a particular place or object, and have very specific agendas, they should ignore us for the most part.”

“Right then, I guess we go ahead,” Dean says, nodding at Cas to continue. Sam still feels uneasy, he doesn’t like the thought of being close to or talking to the dead, something about the idea sits a little too close to home.

Once the doorway is open there isn’t much else he can do but go along. He casts one last look at the expanse of white and silver with a mix of longing and mistrust, there’s so many answers that he’s just leaving behind.

At least he knows now that Dean and Cas are his safest bet, and he feels he knows them, deep down, in a way that feels like home — even if he can’t put words to it. And he does finally, truly, believe that Cas has their best intentions at heart.


	8. The Veil

The veil isn’t so much a specific place, as it turns out, as it is every place everywhere all at once. It’s grey, murky, like walking through fog that never clears. Every step they take shifts the world around them, everything surging past at speeds he can barely comprehend.

When they’re standing still though reality stretches away all around them, rooms and graveyards and funeral homes and forests all layered one on top of the other. It’s dizzying. Like tracing paper laid on top of an image, pages of a magazine that don’t sit right next to each other. Sam tried to reach out and touch, seeing reality so close, albeit blurry, makes him feel homesick in a way he hasn’t been before.

His fingers float through everything, a ghost touch that doesn’t touch at all but brushes through substance like smoke. As he touches everything he can see ripples, the images roiling — rising and falling like waves — and then it all settles back down to the fuzzy overlaid view of different places as if he’d never disturbed a thing.

Dean doubles over, squeezing his eyes closed, a hand pressed to his mouth.

“Dean?” Cas asks,

“Travel sick,” Sam interjects without thinking.

“Close your eyes if you need to, I can see enough for all of us,” Cas says calmly.

“I’ll be good, just need a minute.”

“So is it always like this? For everyone who dies? Are they all here?” Sam asks. They haven’t actually seen a ghost or a spirit yet, or anything resembling another person. Weird shapes drift by in the distance but you couldn’t call them human, formless masses that trail in aimless circles.

“Not for everyone no,” Cas replies, standing still with a furrow between his brows he looks like a statue in the gray and stagnant light. “Only for those who die in unresolved circumstances, or with unfinished business that the soul clings too and won’t let go.”

“That’s when you burn ‘em, make ‘em dissipate to the afterlife,” Dean says without looking up.

Sam frowns, because he knows that’s correct but he doesn’t know _how_ he knows it, it just is — like breathing or moving or blinking, it’s just the way things work.

Cas takes another step and they follow, careen through space, locations zooming past in an instant. Sam steadies Dean with a hand and hauls him upright. “Look at a fixed point, don’t forget to breathe.”

Dean nods. “This place is like being in warp drive, but way less cool.”

“I forgot you were a Trekkie,” Sam says, and then stops. Forgetting means he knew, which means he’s remembering, and he didn’t even realise he’d forgotten which is bizarre on a level he can’t compute.

Dean looks at him with a half-smile, “I remember turning it off before you came back from the library so you wouldn’t know.”

Libraries, motel rooms, their childhood. It’s all slotting into place and he can’t see the whole picture yet but every recalled image feels right and like he’s known it all along.

“Let’s keep going,” Cas urges.

“Cas, don’t you want to let this happen, let us remember?” Dean asks.

Cas looks pained, drawn, like the colour is leaching out of him.

“Is this place making you ill?” he demands, grabbing for Cas’s coat to pull him closer.

Cas sidesteps and shakes his head, “It’s not that.”

Another step and they come face to face with a pale-skinned greyed out image of a woman, she’s screaming, buts it’s silent. Her face is screwed up in agony, or rage, and she leers towards them.

Cas pulls them aside, away, and the room she’s connected to recedes into the distance.

“Shouldn’t we help her?” Sam asks.

“We can’t, not from here.”

“When we get back, we’ll figure out who she was, make it right,” Dean says with certainty. Sam swallows thickly, because yes, there will be work to do when they’re home. He doesn’t know what it is yet, but he feels the weight of it.

They pass what looks to be a dorm room, and his heart lurches. _Jess_. He says the name aloud, the feel of it in his mouth heavy and strange, something he hasn’t said for so long. He never lets himself go there, not really.

Oh god. He doubles over, hit with the pain of it momentarily like it’s new. Fresh and awful, a hole inside his chest that’s sucking every bit of light into it.

“Sam? Sammy?”

“She died, burned.” Like the ghosts, like the souls stuck here. At least she got to move on. “Like _Mom._”

He watches as the words strike Dean making his face go slack and his jaw go tight, as well as caving in his own emotions a second time. Dean nods once, face taut, and then straightens his pack to keep moving.

They always keep moving.

Other things, other people, sit somewhere at the back of his mind. Scattered memories he can’t see yet, but that rankle his thoughts with their presence, like a phantom rattling chains. There are people he couldn’t save, deaths he caused too, he feels it in his bones. A heavy, aching weight of responsibly and guilt.

As they step forward and the world swirls around them in flashes he despairs for a moment at the prospect of living with it for the rest of his life. All this loss, all this pain. He feels Dean brush his shoulder, bumping against him as they sway a little under the dizzying array of sensations. And the moment passes, eclipsed by familiarity and a sense of rightness that he feels as though he hasn’t experienced in months.

Cas is in front of them, their Cas, their friend. Their _family _he thinks with a jolt_._ He doesn’t remember how they met, or where he came from, only that they chose each other. Again and again Cas chose them. Like he’s chosen them now, like he’s saving them now.

“Cas,” he says quietly.

Cas turns, fists clenched, jaw set.

“We’re going to get home soon aren’t we? Get back to… to reality?” Cas nods, once, terse. “You saved us. You are saving us.” He smiles, expecting Cas to return it, but Cas only looks heart wrenchingly sad.

“You remember?” Cas asks, stiffening. “Everything?”

“Enough,” Sam says, stepping forward to clap Cas on the back and pull him in for a hug all at once.

Dean crowds in behind them, ruffling Cas’s hair as he briefly scoops an arm around them both, pulling them in for a sideways hug. “Can we save the sentimentality for when we’re not at risk of being stared to death by a ghost,” he nods, motioning towards a shady figure watching nearby, a steel look in their wavering eyes.

“That’s not possible,” Sam scoffs.

“Have you ever been stuck in the veil before? No! So technically you don’t know what’s possible.”

“We’re not stuck,” Cas says, clearing his throat. “I’m just looking for a doorway that’s closest to home.”

“I don’t mind a trek on the other side, can we not just get out of here A.S.A.P?” Sam says.

“You say that now, but I’m not sure how well you might… readjust on the other side.”

With that mysterious statement they continue walking, shifting through the grey matter that parts like fog before them.

When Cas finally declares he has found a suitable place, Sam watches with rapt attention as the final doorway of their journey springs to life before them.


	9. The End

Stepping into the bustling, cacophonous racket of the world is an assault on the eardrums that Sam hadn’t expected. They’re not even somewhere particularly loud, just the backlot of an old abandoned truck stop. But it hits him with force as he steps through from one plane to the next, even before his foot has hit earth.

As he recoils, but lands firmly and solidly in the world, reality slams into him like a wave of cold water. His entire life folds out around him, rolling out to meet him as memories slot into place. A carpet, a foundation, springing up under his feet that grounds him in himself, in his place, in his reality.

He’s breathless, but smiling ear-splitting wide and wider still when he sees Dean beside him with a scowl that can only mean he’s holding back delight.

“So this is home,” Dean remarks. “‘Bout as wonderful as I expected.” but he lifts his chin in recognition. Sam laughs and half tackles, half smothers him in a hug.

“Gettoff you great bear, do we look like we’re dying? What happened to only hugging for life or death?”

“We also hug for reunions, and I think this counts,” Sam says, pushing him away and dumping the pack he’s been carrying for… for how long? He turns to ask Cas how long they’ve been away and finds him standing ahead, eyes forward, watching the cars racing past. He walks over and places a solid hand on Cas’s shoulder.

Cas startles, face a mask of misery.

“What’s wrong?”

“How do you feel?” Cas asks instead, dodging the question.

“Fine and dandy, and in dire need of a shower. Where are we?” Dean answers.

Cas nods, solemnly, taking this information in like it pains him. He inhales deeply, squaring his shoulders. “Kansas, but a few hundred miles from the bunker.”

Sam’s moves to retrieve his pack, thinking of the meagre rations left inside. “Hitchhiking it is then? Unless someone has a better plan?”

Nobody has a better plan.

* * *

The ride, well, _rides_, back to the bunker pass quietly. They can’t exactly talk about what’s happened with civilians in the driver’s seat. Sam breathes in the fresh, sweet air from the open window, feeling as though it’s the first breath he’s taken in weeks. Maybe it has been. Maybe being trapped in other realms means every function of your body is fake, just a trick of your mind so you don’t go mad.

They thank the people who picked them up and hauled them the last legs of their journey profusely, and are more than happy to walk the last twenty-five miles to home.

Sam is bursting with questions. He starts with the simplest.

“What happened?”

“Don’t skimp on any details,” Dean adds.

“The British Men of Letters,” Cas begins, with a sigh. “They found you were becoming more trouble than you were worth and decided they needed you out of the picture.”

“Did they try to kill us?” Dean asks angrily.

“No, from the information I could gather they thought you could still be useful in bringing word to other hunters once their work was well under way. They just found your interference counterintuitive to the process of their plan at stage one.”

“So much for making good Transatlantic relations,” Sam mutters. He’s always had less reason to trust these assholes than anyone, knowing just what they’re capable of. At least it wasn’t torture this time, he supposes darkly.

“So what exactly did they do to us?” Dean demands. “Where the hell have we been? Everything is a little hazy.”

Which is true, and Sam is trying not to question it too much. His has what feels like half- formed memories of travelling, of seeing wonders and facing new dangers, but the details are getting fuzzier the longer he’s alive and existing in the real world. Like waking from sleep, it was all so clear, and now it feels far away and long ago.

“They created an entire pocket dimension to hold you in,” Cas says, anger written clear across the lines of his face. “I don’t know who they have on their payroll who’s capable of that but I would very much like to find out.”

At their confused looks he continues, “They created a dream-like reality, tailored specifically to you, to keep you occupied. Gave you different memories, a different life, enough to prevent you from realising what was going on so you couldn’t fight it, couldn’t even know it was wrong.”

Sam remembers vaguely the life he’d been living, the fullness of it. The way it felt so real, and yet not right at all, like a bitter taste in the mouth that pervaded every moment of time.

“They did something similar when they had me before,” he says quietly. Dean and Cas both stop to look at him. “Tried to make me believe something else was happening so I would give them the information that wanted. I saw through it then though and woke up. This must have been stronger.”

“There would have been no way to will yourself out of this, it wasn’t a mirage or illusion, you were actually there. The dimension only ceased to exist when you physically left it.”

“Wait, what about all those people? Our friends?” Dean asks, furious and panicked, looking behind them like he could run back and save them.

“They weren’t real, Dean, only figments of magic conjured to appease you.”

“They felt real,” he mutters. “More real than anything we’ve done since.”

“How much of our journey do you remember?” Cas asks them both.

“Some of it, it feels like a bad dream, though,” Sam answers, trying to focus on the here and now, and not be caught up in worries of the past.

Cas nods, picking up the pace of their walking, “That makes sense.”

“So how did you find us?” Dean asks again.

“I followed an agent back to a secret location, infiltrated their defences and found the information I needed to lead me to you.”

It’s a brief description, and Cas refuses to give more answers, insistent that there isn’t more to say. Eventually, once they’re home, the need for more information bleeds away as they shower and sleep and eat. They settle into the routine of the world, picking up the threads of their life again. Two days pass in a mixture of frenzied phone calls to let everyone know they’re fine, and boredom and long stretches of time where they don’t know what to do.

Their mother is alive, and needs to be told what happened so she doesn’t keep blindly working for the sons of bitches who did it. The British Men of Letters have to be stopped, have to be sent packing where they can’t do anyone else harm. Kelly Kline is still missing and in need of help, and her child prevented from destroying the world. So much to do, and so little clue of how to accomplish most of it.

Something wriggles around at the back of Sam’s mind the entire time, but he doesn’t know how to put words to it. Only that he feels something is off, something is wrong. There’s a distance and numbness when all three of them are together, a shift in their dynamic that has his Spidy-senses tingling, and worry lines creasing his forehead.

* * *

Cas is… different. It’s that simple, and that complicated, and it’s the only word Sam can think to put to it. He’s just not himself. And it’s not as though they’re usually open and communicative but there’s a tightness around him that permeates the very air. It takes a few days to notice the depths of it but once Sam sees it, he can’t ignore it.

Any attempt to engage in conversation falls abruptly flat as Cas won’t answer in much more than monosyllables and agreeable nods. He’s… well he’s almost subservient, not fighting them on anything, not disagreeing, not even voicing opinions.

The only thing Sam can think to do is to start with factual questions and hope Cas decides to volunteer more information. He starts with something easy, something that’s been eating at his curiosity.

He finds Cas in the library and sits down opposite him, Dean follows him in, looking a little lost and glad of a distraction. None of them have had much of a direction to head in since they got back, fighting a well oiled secret organisation doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

“So, can I ask…” Sam begins. Cas nods, sitting back and folding his hands across his stomach. Careful, reserved. Sam should know then that this isn’t going to go well, but he breezes past it, ignoring every warning sign because he’s been seeing distress signals for days and he needs to get to the heart of the matter, one way or another.

“The powder, and how you opened the doorways, how did that work? What was it? How come you couldn’t just bring us straight from there to here?”

Cas looks pained, catching Sam off guard.

“I… traditional magic, my grace-powered skills, would not work in the pocket dimension. It was designed to be the antithesis of your reality, which meant it successfully resisted any attempt to break through the barriers with normal methods.”

“Okay, that makes sense. Relax Cas, I’m just interested, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

If anything, that statement of reassurance seems to agitate Cas more.

“It was… it was a mixture I made myself, out of ingredients that are constant no matter where you are in the planes of reality. Things that could connect with the deep wells of energy that permeate every atom of the universe so I could force them to open the doors between dimensions. Demon bones, an angel feather, magma, a crystallized lightning bolt... and, there were personal belongings.” He pauses, hangs his head. “Things of yours, both of you, that held significance. I had to make sure it was connected to you so that you could pass through, and I didn’t know how else to do it. I’m sorry.”

Dean leans forward, elbows on the table. “Sorry? Cas, you got us out, what’s there to be sorry about? So we lost a few prized possessions, we have our lives, I think we can safely say we’d agree to that trade.”

“But I did it without your permission.”

“You couldn’t have asked for our permission, but if it helps, I’m glad you took that initiative. You have my permission, and my thanks, retroactively,” Sam says, giving Cas a small smile.

Cas grimaces, and nods. “That’s very sweet Sam, but you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“What I had to do, the magnitude of it. I may never be able to forgive myself, or earn your trust, I realise that. I know… know you may not want me around, but I don’t know that I can leave.”

He stands, ironically, to leave the room. Breezes away before either of them can say anything.

Dean looks at Sam, gobsmacked. They sit in silence for almost a full minute, until Dean says “What do you suppose he took?”

* * *

They rifle through their belongings with curiosity, trying to find something that’s missing.

Their mother's wedding ring.

Dean’s favorite Zippo lighter.

Sam’s Stanford acceptance letter.

The childhood army figure Sam had kept for years.

A photograph of them as teenagers.

It dawns on them, as they sit on Dean’s bed and weigh the measure of these things against being trapped in an alternate reality forever, that Cas must think he has violated them irreparably. The losses are not insignificant, but they’re not unforgivable either given what they were used for.

“Do you think there’s more?” Sam asks.

“That he took?”

“That he isn’t saying?”

“Probably. He learned from us after all.”

“What?”

“We’re good at secrets, is all. Not that I’m proud of it.” Dean rises, slapping his knees. “Might as well get this over with.”

They find Cas in a corridor, seemingly wandering aimlessly. They ask to talk, and he follows them with a bowed head, until they reach a cross section of corridors and he trails in the wrong direction.

“Cas…?” Sam calls after him, turning to see where he went. They find him standing resolutely outside the door to the dungeon, eyes fixed ahead and fists clenched.

“What you doin’ there buddy?” Dean asks, in his most obviously overdone placating voice.

“I imagine you might prefer to have this conversation somewhere that does not feel like a comforting place,” Cas replies, looking at them briefly, and touches the door behind him hesitantly. “And if… if you’d rather I weren’t… around, afterwards, then I can remain in this room for the foreseeable future.”

“Cas, what are you talking about? We know you had to take some of our things to form the spell, you really think we’d disown you for that?” Sam says, trying not to sound angry or forceful.

“Not for that,” Cas says, miserably. “What I have done, is more than I could ever ask of you, more than I would ever presume to take. I will understand if it’s too much, if it’s a betrayal too far, if I overstepped. Please,” he looks at them, eyes swimming, “please remember that I didn’t do it out of any selfish reason. That I only wanted to get you back, for yourselves not for me. If I had known any other way…”

“Let’s just... just start at the beginning,” Sam says. He’s nervous, concerned, but not really for himself. He’s never seen Cas like this, so overwhelmed and heartbroken. Whatever could cause this it can’t be good, but he senses it’s a problem of Castiel’s own making and his self-blame is making it seem larger and more threatening.

Cas breathes in deeply, eyes unfocused and then snapping up as though he’s made a decision. “Finding you was difficult, I had to trace the magic used to create the pocket dimension from its source. And when I did, I realised the magnitude of what they had done to you. You were bound to that dimension like… like an umbilical cord, you sustained it, and it in turn kept you contained. If I had pulled you out without making any prior arrangements I feared it may have collapsed around you trapping us all in the ether.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Sam encourages. He wants to reach out and touch Cas, reassure him of their presence, but he’s twitchy and animated and looks like he wants to pace. He does just that, pushing open the door behind him and striding into the dungeon. Dean shrugs and follows him in, leaning against the wall, and Sam sighs, before bringing up the rear and going in too.

“I had to bind you to something else, something real and unchanging,” Cas continues after a few moments, “I could think of no better thing to do that with but… each other.” He waits a beat, looking down, composing himself. “Each other and… and me.”

Sam and Dean look at each other and Sam is bewildered.

“What does that mean?” Dean asks.

“It means I used your souls as a power source, both to open the portals and keep us all safe as we travelled. It means I bound yours together, intrinsically linked, and then joined them with my grace. It was like rock climbers who use lines as a safety link, so no one person can get lost. I took the only power the spell could not effect, and made use of it.”

“That… that doesn’t sound so bad Cas. What you’re saying makes sense, you did what you had to do.” Sam shrugs. It’s not nearly as bad as he feared.

“Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t choose to have my soul groped on any old day of the week, but it doesn’t sound like you were left with much of a choice.”

Cas looks like he’s about to double over, as though pain has hit him hard and he’s bowing under the pressure. “There’s always a choice, you taught me that.”

“Yes, but if anyone’s to blame here it’s the British Men of Letters. They’re the ones who did this to us.” Sam says. His anger towards them is always close to the surface, and it makes his words come out strong and harsh.

“They would never have dared mess with your souls, no one should have that right.”

“Well if it had to be anyone, I’m glad it was you,” Dean says, clapping Cas on the back.

“You don’t understand,” Cas replies. He sounds hollow, emptied out of all emotion. Sam frowns and Cas grimaces. “I can’t undo it.”

“What?” Sam asks, uncrossing his arms and stepping forward.

“It’s… it’s permanent. We are bound together, now, and always, until our lives are over.”

The statement hits the room like a blast, Dean stands back, eyes wide. Cas crumples, leaning against the wall for support. And Sam rocks in place feeling shell-shocked. He’s still not sure what that _means_ but it feels huge. It’s confusing, and mind boggling.

“Wait, wait,” Dean says. “So what, we’re joined at the hip or something?”

“I… I don’t think it’s to do with physical proximity. Not necessarily.”

“But that’s why you think you shouldn’t leave, just in case?” Sam asks.

“Yes.”

“But we’ve been all over this place and been fine, and it’s not a small bunker?”

Cas looks up, a crease between his eyes. He shrugs, and hangs his head. “I haven’t wanted to test the theory by venturing further. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I would have asked, if there was a way for you to understand what I was asking. But you didn’t remember me, let alone each other.”

Dean hasn’t moved, and he’s looking at Sam with a surety Sam isn’t convinced he feels. “Whatever it is, whatever it means, we’ll deal with it,” Dean says.

“What more do you know Cas?” Sam asks. Information, that’s what they need.

“My grace is a strong force, it’s now wrapped around and entwined with your souls, flowing together. The two forces are compatible and… they compliment each other. That’s why humans can be used as vessels.”

“So what, we’re suped up mega humans now? Do we get superpowers?” Dean says, striving for lightness. Cas’s face crumples.

“In effect, partly, yes. It will sustain you longer than a human body could survive. You won’t age or change as you would expect to, you will live long and healthy lives. Other than that I don’t think it will effect you in any noticeable sense, for the most part.”

Something inside Sam eases, something that had been remembering the alien touch of other angels, of the burning brightness of Lucifer and the insidious wrongness of Gadreel. Some thought of a cancer-like entity pulsing away inside him, lessens.

“That’s all?” he asks, finding a smile on his lips.

Cas shakes his head, “When, or if, one of us dies or is injured, I think it will effect the other two of us. We are now three parts sharing our essence with the other two, what effects one, effects the others.”

“I die, he dies?” Dean says, pointing at himself and then Sam. “Or you, and he and I?” Dean frowns, and Sam can see his mind working. “Isn’t that how it’s always been anyway?” he finishes after a moment.

Cas looks up sharply.

“It’s not like any of us ever get along that well without the others, if I don’t have to live in a world without my little brother or my best friend… there’s a silver lining to that.”

He smiles at Sam, and opens his arms. A gesture of _so what, is that all?_

“I don’t think it would be instantaneous,” Cas rushes to say. “I think, without the sustaining life force, whoever is left behind would slowly fade, until they meet their end peacefully.”

“Time to say goodbye?” Sam asks quietly. “And maybe with the other abandoned party to go on one last hurrah?”

Cas’s eyes fill with tears. “How can you be so cavalier about this? I altered your very _beings_, chained you together irreparably, forced myself upon your souls…”

“We already chose this life, and wanted you to come along and stay with us,” Sam says, letting the information settle around him and feeling how it doesn’t feel bad, at all. “So now it’s a little more literal? That it’s us three against the world? I don’t see that it changes much.”

“You were already a brother, family through and through,” Dean adds. “Now you’re just stuck with us. So what?”

“It’ll be an adjustment, I’m sure, but I can think of worse things to adjust to.” Sam hopes he’s right, already picturing nightmares that may worm their way in, knowing he has something angelic riding around inside him. But it’s _Cas_, and _Dean,_ and at the end of the day no matter what else happens, they will always have his back.

“Come on, we’re not having this conversation in the fucking dungeon of all places. I’ll get beer — library, now, we’ve got some catching up to speed to do.” Dean says.

And just like that, they all file out, and Cas is as shell shocked and quiet as Sam has ever known him. But they’ll bring him round, one way or another.

* * *

Hours later they’re still sitting round the tables, empty beer bottles and take-out boxes the only sign of time passing. They’ve laughed, reminisced, gone over every detail of the journey Sam and Dean could remember while Cas filled in the things they couldn’t. After a quiet few moments Sam finally asks something he’s sure might upset Cas, but needs asking. For no other reason than he’s curious.

“So… the ropes, and the gag…”

“And my blindfold don’t forget,” Dean interjects, smiling that devilish smile of his.

“Yeah, what was with that?” Sam says, leaning forward.

Cas honest to god blushes, which Sam wasn’t sure he was capable of. “I needed a way to subdue you, I didn’t want every step to be a battle. Powers didn’t work, I couldn’t knock you out with my grace. I apologise, but a little while of being uncomfortable seemed worth it.”

“Okay, so the ropes I get, but why stop us talking and seeing?” Dean laughs, alcohol buzz making him happier and louder and softer as he glugs another mouthful.

Cas frets, wringing his hands and Sam feels bad, but they have to get past this. Have to make him see they don’t hold a grudge, and the only way to do that is to talk it out.

“I needed to know you were still in there, still _you_. That you would have each other’s backs — as you would say — and be able to see eye to eye, no matter what. Impeding your ability to communicate meant you had to find other ways to help each other. It proved you could still be a team, that there was something left of the old you, the real versions of yourselves. It made me sure I could save you.”

“Wait,” Sam says, a smile tugging at his lips, “it was all just a test?”

“Yeah, I thought you were going to say it was because we were so formidable you couldn’t have us double teaming you.” Dean adds.

“Well, there was that too,” Cas concedes. “Until I had more than the ropes to hold you, I was concerned you might overpower me if you got the chance.”

They frown at him, and each other, “Cas, Buddy,” Dean says, slurring a little, “we couldn’t get those damn ropes undone no matter what we tried.”

“I wasn’t sure how well they would hold. I burned the binding sigils into the ropes before I entered the pocket dimension, mixed in with some of the same ingredients I used to open the portals. My hands should have been the only ones able to unknot them, but I had no way to test it before I needed them to work.”

“Wait!” Sam exclaims, something sliding into place as he sits there. “That’s why you chloroformed me too, isn’t it! Because you couldn’t use magic to knock me out?”

“Yes,” Cas answers, looking ashamed. “Dealing with one awake and pissed off Winchester was about as much as I could handle.”

Dean laughs, kicking Cas’s feet under the table, “You do think I’m formidable.”

“I think you’re enjoying this a little too much,” Sam says to Dean. He leans forward to offer his beer bottle to Cas, raising it in salute. “Well, here’s to old friends doing whatever it takes to look out for each other. Even if it means drugging them and dragging them through Hell dimensions to get them home.”

“We never went to hell,” Cas says, lifting his glass in return. “We could save that for the next time though.”

“Pah, hell is old news, been there done that. I wanna go to Neverland next,” Dean says, clinking his whiskey glass with them both too.

“I don’t think Neverland is real Dean.”

“Fine, but I want a real vacation, after all this is over.” Dean waves a hand around him, indicating… well, everything.

Sam smiles, thinking about the future, about what they might face. He sits half turned toward the stairs, and the entrance, able to keep watch for any intrusions. Alert and aware of his surroundings. Safe in the knowledge that he’s not alone, whatever comes.

And a few weeks later when things have settled and the nightmares start up again, he’s got a gun under his pillow, and a brother in the next room, and all the knowledge in the world about how to deal with monsters of any kind.

And an angel watching over him.

And an unbreakable bond tying him to the two people he loves most.

So no matter that this is his life, and has always been his life, and it’s full of danger, darkness and new horrors, he knows he’s going to be okay. He knows where he belongs, what his purpose is. He’s ready to wake up and keep fighting.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to [Coco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coconutice22/pseuds/Coconutice22) for helping me beta this thing and fix stray commas and typos! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading, let me know if you did, kudos and comments are always a happy find!


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